Highlander Health announces new clinical trial-focused partnerships

New financing organization Highlander Health will support clinician-led projects focused on new ways of testing candidate medicines in a series of new collaborations.

Highlander partnered with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy, the Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, stating it would provide grants to fund key projects.

Co-founder Amy Abernethy said, “The grant funding to these world-renowned institutions will aim to simplify clinical trials and innovate the potential of real-world data. We want to understand what approaches work across settings, coalesce stakeholders, and embrace the evolution happening in the market right now.”

The projects, which will also be supported by US charity the Lyda Hill Philanthropies, will see the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy extend its work on evidence generation to advance the understanding of how it can shape drug development.

Mark McClellan, founding director, said, “While some progress has been made, this partnership with Highlander Health will help stakeholders move beyond the present state and drive improvements in population health outcomes.”

Similarly, the Baylor Scott & White Research Institute will look at using secure data to populate clinical trial and registry datasets, including how to address issues such as data quality and provenance.

With its grant funding, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s learning lab will look to demonstrate a streamlined approach to clinical research operations across a network of affiliated sites.

Highlander said the project will test a central investigator-based model, streamline the launch of studies at research sites, and help decrease the burden on clinicians by centralizing aspects of execution.

Highlander was founded in September with the aim of providing financial grants to health systems to modernize and streamline evidence generation.

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