The adventures of medieval knights have fired our imagination since their first description in books such as Search for the Holy Grail, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Parzifal to name a few. I was recently struck by an interesting link between such knights errant and clinical trials when I asked the question: what were the eligibility clinical trial criteria for knighthood?

Do you still carry a briefcase full of paper? Are you lost without an internet connection? Hopefully, you have embraced technology and answered "No" and "Yes" to those questions.

The new iPad is here and, if sales are any indication, the tablet wave is growing even stronger. Some tech journalists are even predicting that tablets (coupled with cloud-based storage) will bring about the end of the PC. If you follow this blog, you know that I am very interested in the possible application of tablet use in medical practice and clinical trials. While there is still a scarcity of any real information on their use in drug development, I am beginning to find some practical applications that could lead to further industry adoption of tablet computers and clinical trial app use in medicine and clinical trials.

What do companies want to know when selecting an EDC solution? As a BioClinica eClinical product demonstrator, I meet a lot of sponsors and CROs looking for an Electronic Data Capture (EDC) product to support their clinical trials. EDC systems have become an integral part of the clinical trial process, so most companies I encounter have used them before. Some want to see all the options before selecting a vendor, others are unhappy with the vendor they have been using and are ready for a change, and a few have never used EDC in clinical trials and are starting from scratch.

Clinical research form specification, programming and validation: Why do we make it out to be more than what it really is?

While in Buenos Aires at an investigator meeting, I recently met Deby from Quintiles. While chatting over a dinner, I heard about her great kids and in particular Colin, (great name!) who has cerebral palsy. Colin is an intelligent 14 year old caught in a disabled body. As we continued talking I asked about the potential use of an iPad for his communication and there the story developed. I had not realized that the iPad tablet requires the small electric charge that the skin produces in order to work. Therefore a basic stylus or head stick does not work.

My last few blog posts have focused on how tablet computers and clinical trial apps may change the way we conduct trials. In order to better explore the impact of tablets on the pharmaceutical industry, I decided it was important to understand how they are being used more generically in business.

My hobby is aviation and flying. I therefore either work or play in two of the most highly federal-regulated industries. In this context, I couldn't help but notice the wide divergence in the use of relatively new medical apps and aviation apps for tablet technology use in these two industries. In the aviation world, computer tablet technology has been fully embraced and there has been a rapid uptake of its use in the cockpit. In the area of clinical trials there is a paucity of use, although in medicine in general there has been a fast uptake See my previous blog post on "Clinical Apps for iPad and Tablet Use in Medicine and Clinical Trials" for lists of apps and other links.

For those of you who have followed this blog for a while will recall we had a series in the use of tablets (iPads, androids, etc.) in medicine and clinical trials. It has been a while since I have provided any updates on clinical apps and so the time seemed appropriate.

There is no doubt that medical imaging ultrasound has it’s origins in the development of naval sonar, used to combat the threat of German submarines in the First World War. The field of acoustics is littered with well known names such as Pierre and Jacques Curie who discovered the piezo-electric effect in 1880. A powerful high frequency ultrasonic echo-sounding device was later developed by eminent French physicist Paul Langévin and Russian scientist Constantin Chilowsky. They called their device the 'hydrophone.’ Between 1915 and 1918 the hydrophone was further improved in classified research activities before being deployed extensively in the surveillance of German U-boats and submarines, and this is where our unsung hero enter the scene.