National Taiwan University Hospital and AbbVie Pharmaceuticals signed a cooperation agreement the day before yesterday to expand their research and development collaboration, enhance the digital strategy for clinical trials, and accelerate the speed and quality of clinical trial enrollment. The agreement was signed by NTU Hospital President Dr. Ming-Shiang Wu and AbbVie General Manager Richard Sun, aiming to strengthen the digital strategy for clinical trials. Through new clinical trial research models, the collaboration seeks to speed up trial enrollment and improve quality, drive forward-looking clinical trial research, and enhance the quality of clinical trials in Taiwan and its international competitiveness.
Since 2013, NTU Hospital has worked closely with AbbVie Pharmaceuticals, collaborating on 72 clinical trial projects, with a 45% growth in the number of cases and enrollments. Last year, the clinical trial startup speed of the Taiwan research team ranked first in the Asia-Pacific region, highlighting Taiwan’s excellent performance in clinical trial enrollment and execution.
Over the past decade, notable achievements include two successful global first clinical trial enrollments led by Professor Jia-Feng Wu and his pediatric hepatology, gastroenterology, and surgery team in 2023. In 2024, Vice President Ann-Lii Cheng, Chief Physician of Internal Medicine TAI-CHUNG HUANG, and Clinical Associate Professor Shang-Yi Huang led the hematology-oncology team to successfully complete four enrollments at the first trial center outside the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.
In recent years, AbbVie Pharmaceuticals has actively developed the digitalization of clinical trials. In 2019, they collaborated with the team led by Professor Tsen-Fang Tsai, Director of the Dermatology Department at NTU College of Medicine, to initiate a digital informed consent process (e-consent) for participants. Because participants do not need to sign immediately, this reduces pressure and anxiety, thereby increasing participation. For the research team, the use of e-consent accelerates study initiation and reduces errors caused by manual operations.
The use of digital management has made it easier to manage consent forms and facilitate regulatory agency audits, improving participant protection. Over the past five years, around 33% and 21% of AbbVie’s clinical trial projects in Taiwan incorporated digital data collection and wearable device designs. This reduces the burden on participants from traveling to trial sites and makes the execution of clinical trials more flexible and effective.
Since its establishment over 20 years ago, NTU Hospital’s Clinical Trials Center has conducted more than 1,000 active clinical trials each year in the last two years, with around 200 investigator-initiated trials. It continues to lead the nation in clinical trial collaborations across seven major areas: liver disease, breast cancer, gastrointestinal diseases and Helicobacter pylori, pediatric infections, adult infections, lung cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.
NTU Hospital and AbbVie Pharmaceuticals aim to use the enhancement of the digital development of clinical trials as a foundation to actively promote decentralized clinical trials and new clinical trial research models, jointly improving the quality of clinical trials in Taiwan and its international competitiveness, continuing to align with global standards.
Resource: 台大醫院與艾伯維藥品擴大合作 強化臨床試驗數位策略
