European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network

The European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network (ECRIN) was established in 2004 with funding from Sixth Framework Programme as a reciprocal knowledge programme, to connect national networks of clinical research infrastructures throughout the European Union.

The national participants work in a network together with the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice. Six European countries participate in ECRIN : (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) and the have a transatlantic link with Canada. These collectively represent 112 medical centres and hospitals that conduct in the region of 1,500 clinical studies. If ECRIN succeeds in helping to create a Europe-wide network of centres sufficient scale will evolve to facilitate EU standards in clinical research and appropriate training.

Objectives
ECRIN intends to meet the expectations of the EU and the pharmaceutical industry through a harmonisation process, ensuring adequate quality standards through audit procedures and an ability to conducts cross-border projects that comply with good clinical practice.
 * Improve the quality of clinical research through the compatibility of procedures, tools and practices.
 * Support industry and academic multinational clinical studies in Europe.
 * Promote specialty or disease-specific networks, working multinationally and using cohorts and registries of patients; fostering enrolment to same.

Removing Bottlenecks
A ten-point set of initiatives is being developed across participating member countries to stramline clinical research:
 * Compatible structuring of centres, partnerships
 * Sponsors and funding
 * Ethics and informed consent
 * Legislation, regulation and insurance
 * Adverse event reporting
 * Methodology, data management and monitoring
 * Quality assurance, standard operating procedure and audits
 * Communication with participants, investigators and sponsors
 * Transparency and clinical trial registries
 * Education and careers