As a software engineer, the coordination problem you're describing is deeply familiar. The entire tech industry runs on standardized protocols: HTTP for the web, SMTP for email, protocol buffers for data transmission. What's striking about all of them is how they got adopted. Nobody had to mandate them, but they were developed by consortiums or open-sourced by large companies, given away for free, and adopted widely because they reduced friction for everyone.Developers embraced them because they made it easier to focus on the work that actually mattered.
The Pharma/CRO industry seems to lack both the incentives and the persistent online collaboration environment that made those standards possible in software. But there's one exception worth noting: ClinicalTrials.gov. That platform seems to have achieved near-universal adoption across the industry (or the closest thing to it). Every sponsor, CRO, and academic institution has to interface with it regardless. That makes it a uniquely powerful coordination point.
I wonder if the most promising path to standardization isn't designing a new protocol and hoping that some industry professionals adopt it, but rather building off the infrastructure that's already been adopted. The first step is having everyone understand what kind of information is actually stored on ClinicalTrials.gov! But this could certainly be the next step.
As a software engineer, the coordination problem you're describing is deeply familiar. The entire tech industry runs on standardized protocols: HTTP for the web, SMTP for email, protocol buffers for data transmission. What's striking about all of them is how they got adopted. Nobody had to mandate them, but they were developed by consortiums or open-sourced by large companies, given away for free, and adopted widely because they reduced friction for everyone.Developers embraced them because they made it easier to focus on the work that actually mattered.
The Pharma/CRO industry seems to lack both the incentives and the persistent online collaboration environment that made those standards possible in software. But there's one exception worth noting: ClinicalTrials.gov. That platform seems to have achieved near-universal adoption across the industry (or the closest thing to it). Every sponsor, CRO, and academic institution has to interface with it regardless. That makes it a uniquely powerful coordination point.
I wonder if the most promising path to standardization isn't designing a new protocol and hoping that some industry professionals adopt it, but rather building off the infrastructure that's already been adopted. The first step is having everyone understand what kind of information is actually stored on ClinicalTrials.gov! But this could certainly be the next step.
Well put!