CDISC Board of Directors Elects New Board Members to Strengthen Global Leadership...

CDISC Board of Directors Elects New Board Members to Strengthen Global Leadership Base

AUSTIN, Texas--(Business Wire)--Dr. David Hardison, Chairman of the Board of CDISC (the Clinical
Data Interchange Standards Consortium), is pleased to announce a
number of changes to the CDISC Board of Directors which will
strengthen the global leadership base of the CDISC organization.

In January, CDISC will add 3 new members to the CDISC Board of
Directors: Tim M. Jaeger, Isabelle de Zegher, and Sue Dubman. Paula
Stafford was re-elected for a new Board term and Frank Rockhold was
elected to be the new CDISC Chair-elect.

Two of the new Board members are located in the European Union,
Tim M. Jaeger, M.D., Ph.D, MBA, and Isabelle de Zegher, M.D., Ms.Sc.
Dr. Jaeger represents Roche Diagnostics as Head of Medical and
Scientific Affairs. Dr. Jaeger is a pioneer and long time proponent
for the use of data standards to improve medical research capabilities
through his work in building a standards-based technology
infrastructure for an EU project to develop Networks of Competence
throughout Europe. He brings to the CDISC Board of Directors a sound
understanding of the European clinical trial and regulatory landscape
with a thorough understanding of the growing field of diagnostics
including the integration of diagnostic and therapeutic trial data
sets. Dr. Jaeger is also the current Chairman of the European CDISC
Coordinating Committee (E3C).

Dr. de Zegher represents Novartis Pharma as Chief Data Officer for
Development. She brings to the CDISC Board a wealth of expertise in
computer science applications in both health care and pharmaceutical
industry and is spearheading initiatives in health information
technology within the pharmaceutical industry. Not only does she
contribute insights into the complex and heterogeneous European life
science market, but she is knowledgeable in the area of standards and
their contributions to system interoperability.

The third new CDISC board member is Sue Dubman. Ms. Dubman is
currently Vice President, Information Technology (IT) and Informatics
at Theravance, Inc., and has over 15 years experience in life sciences
and health care. Prior to Theravance, Dubman was Director of
Biomedical Informatics Applications at the National Cancer Institute
(NCI). In that role she helped architect and lead several key
informatics programs as part of the cancer Bioinformatics Grid
(caBIG(TM)) initiative that are widely recognized for their potential
to change the way research is done, drugs are developed and how
patients and providers interact with the health care enterprise. Ms.
Dubman's experience with the many academic, government and industry
stakeholders in the medical research arena and her familiarity with
running complex informatics programs will be of great support to CDISC
in its continued growth and development.

Paula Stafford, MPH, who had been serving a partial term to
replace a departing board member, has now been elected to a full board
term. Ms. Stafford is the Executive Vice President of Global Data
Management at Quintiles. She is the leader of the Board's Financial
Oversight Committee.

Dr. Frank Rockhold, Senior Vice President, Drug Development
Sciences for GlaxoSmithKline will take the role of CDISC Chair-elect
in January for a 2-year term, after which he will become Board Chair.
Dr. Rockhold has been the Chair of the CDISC Board Strategy Committee
for the past two years and has also added his insights and
contributions to the Governance Committee. Dr. Ed Helton, the current
CDISC Chair-elect remarked, "Frank has excellent managerial skills and
talents; he has a great appreciation of the value that standard data
will bring to public health and the pharmaceutical industry. We get
captured by the idea of standard data for submission, but Frank is
always quick to point out to us that there are other great benefits to
having standard data in healthcare -- not all data are used for
submissions -- but having standard data for the remaining research
data are also very useful, and we should not lose sight of that."

Dr. Hardison, current Chair of the CDISC Board, stated, "CDISC is
very fortunate to have such an esteemed Board of Directors. Each
Director on the Board has unique talents that will direct the mission
of CDISC to fruition."

CDISC would like thank the departing board members, Kenneth Getz,
President of CISCRP and Research Fellow, Tufts, Dr. Charles Jaffe, CEO
of HL7 and Dr. Steve Ruberg, Research Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company,
for their unique contributions, leadership and vision over the
duration of their recent terms on the CDISC Board of Directors. Dr.
Rebecca Kush, CDISC CEO and President, adds, "The contributions of
these Directors on the CDISC Board have been vital to the continued
growth and progress of CDISC and are very much appreciated. We trust
that you will continue to be involved with CDISC in other capacities
going forward."

ABOUT CDISC

CDISC is a global, open, multidisciplinary, non-profit
organization that has established standards to support the
acquisition, exchange, submission and archive of clinical research
data and metadata. The CDISC mission is to develop and support global,
platform-independent data standards that enable information system
interoperability to improve medical research and related areas of
healthcare. CDISC standards are vendor-neutral, platform-independent
and freely available via the CDISC website.

CDISC is made possible through the generous support of its
members, sponsors, and volunteer participants. These include academia,
biopharmaceutical companies, device and diagnostics companies,
technology and service providers and anyone interested in streamlining
biopharmaceutical product development and improving clinical data
quality and healthcare.

Additional information on CDISC can be found on the CDISC website
at www.cdisc.org.

CDISC
Tanyss Mason, 919-419-7100
Director of Communications
tmason@cdisc.org

Copyright Business Wire 2007