A collaborative environment to improve and streamline approval processes online is presented. A scenario for approving requests to access sensitive medical data records for research purposes from a medical data warehouse at a teaching hospital is used to illustrate the special requirements needed for collaborative approval processes. The architectural framework to support such processes is defi...

Regulators such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have elaborate, multi-year processes for approving new drugs as safe and effective. Nonetheless, in recent years, several approved drugs have been withdrawn from the market because of serious and sometimes fatal side effects. We describe statistical methods for post-approval data analysis that attempt to detect drug safety problems as qui...

The objective of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AACPDM) Evidence Reports is to provide the biomedical research and clinical practice communities with the current state of evidence about vari­ ous interventions for the management of developmental dis­ abilities. The AACPDM evidence reports aggregate all that has been published about outcomes of an interventio...

In 1863, the Metropolitan Railway of what came to be known as the London Underground successfully opened as the world’s first subway. Its high ridership spawned interest in additional links. Entrepreneurs secured funding and then proposed new lines to Parliament for approval, though only a portion were actually approved. While putative rail barons may have conducted some economic analysis, the ...