ERT Expands Scientific Consulting Group

Industry Veteran Brings 30 Years of COA Experience to Scientific and Regulatory Team

ERT, a leading global solution provider for high-quality patient safety and efficacy endpoint data collection, recently announced an expansion to its cardiac safety, respiratory, and Clinical Outcome Assessment (COA)/electronic COA (eCOA) consulting group. Colleen A. McHorney, PhD - an internationally acknowledged thought leader in the field of health outcomes assessment and health services research – has joined ERT as a Senior Scientist in its COA consulting group.

With 30 years of experience, Dr. McHorney is highly regarded in the field of health outcomes assessment and measurement. Her expertise spans from qualitative research for concept elicitation and patient comprehension to advanced classical and modern psychometric techniques for item analysis and scale validation. A trained psychometrician, Dr. McHorney has contributed to the advancement of patient-experience research through the conceptualization, development, and validation of numerous patient-based symptom, quality of life, and quality of care tools, both generic and disease-specific. These span the areas of osteoporosis, diabetes, female sexual function, and mental health, among others. In addition, Dr. McHorney is a recognized expert in medication adherence research and brings to ERT over seven years of patient-centered research on adherence.

“Biopharmaceutical researchers striving to understand the patient experience during new drug development will benefit greatly from Colleen’s knowledge of health outcomes assessment and measurement,” said ERT Vice President, Project Management and eCOA Consulting, Jason Eger. “We are delighted to welcome her to our established team of scientific and regulatory thought leaders and to extend her wealth of experience to our biopharmaceutical clients.”

“I decided to join ERT based on how closely aligned our respective research objectives and approaches are,” said McHorney. “I am thrilled to join this group of pioneering scientists as they continue to advance the creation and execution of effective COA strategies to meet their clients’ regulatory and commercialization goals.”

Dr. McHorney will share insights of her experience in a complimentary webinar on March 31, 2015, “A Primer on Medication Adherence: Nature, Extent, and Determinants of Non-Adherence and its Relationship to Patient Outcomes.” For additional information and to registers, visit www.ert.com/clinical/resources/webinars. 

About ERT

ERT is a leading provider of high-quality patient safety and efficacy endpoint data collection solutions for use in clinical drug development. ERT delivers a combination of technology, services, and consulting that increase the accuracy and reliability of patient data and improve the efficiency of the clinical development process throughout the product lifecycle. ERT delivers the most widely deployed solutions in centralized cardiac safety, respiratory services, suicide risk assessment and Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) – which includes patient, clinician, and observer reported outcomes as well as data analytics across the trials. By efficiently integrating these solutions through a system built upon a scientific and regulatory foundation, ERT collects, analyzes, and delivers safety and efficacy data critical to the approval, labeling, and reimbursement of pharmaceutical products. ERT is a global organization with headquarters in Philadelphia, PA and offices throughout the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Germany. For more information, visit www.ert.com.