news

Kaplan EduNeering Provides Technology Platform for National Children Study

November 20, 2008 - Princeton, NJ - Kaplan EduNeering, a leading provider of compliance and knowledge management solutions, will provide the technology platform for the National Children's Study under contract to Westat.

ComplianceWire®, Kaplan EduNeering's compliance and learning management system, will enable the distribution, validation and documentation of critical information related to this groundbreaking study. The National Children's Study will follow more than 100,000 children over a 21-year period to better understand the effects of numerous factors on children's health. Investigators hope to identify reasons for the growing numbers of childhood obesity, cancer, autism and premature births, among other issues. The $2.7 billion study will involve participants from 105 counties across the nation and will begin recruiting patients in January, 2009.

The National Children's Study is led by a consortium of federal partners including: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"A study of this size and length requires a high degree of coordination, collaboration and communication," said Janice McFarland, Kaplan EduNeering's Senior Vice President responsible for the company's relationship with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "Kaplan EduNeering's solution was co-developed with FDA under a unique Cooperative Research & Development Agreement and has been used to train and certify 30,000 federal, state and local investigators. Used by 1 million individuals in more than 50 countries, ComplianceWire is relied upon by the medical research community to support multi-site clinical trials."

In addition to its work with FDA, Kaplan EduNeering provides the foundation of a comprehensive Good Clinical Practices (GCP) online learning program for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kaplan EduNeering's solution provides assurance that NIAID research grant recipients, their study staffs and key NIAID personnel have the knowledge required by NIAID to conduct clinical research.