Medicor makes research easy for docs

While Health Sciences North's burgeoning research activities have grabbed a lot of headlines recently, a local business owner wants people to know the hospital isn't the only organization in town doing medical research.

Barbara Ward said her company, Medicor Research Inc., has been around since 2005, and takes care of all the practical details for physicians who wish to enrol their patients in clinical trials.

“When you look in the newspaper, you think research is only being done at the hospital, or it's only academic research or breast cancer research,” she said.
“But there is a whole other area, which is me — a privately owned site-management organization doing 40 trials a year with 40 doctors in town.”

The business, located in the medical building on Riverside Drive, receives no government funding.

She said her motto is to make clinical trials easy for physicians.

“You don't want a physician to be trying to do this complicated clinical trial with all this paperwork on their own without somebody like me who has this expertise to guide them through it.”

What usually happens is she's contacted by pharmaceutical companies who are looking for participants in clinical drug trails; in turn, she phones local doctors to see if they're interested in enrolling their patients.

If they are, her 12 staff take care of all the paperwork, ensuring the proper submissions to Health Canada and ethical review boards have been completed.

Ward said she got into this area when she was a nurse working for a local family physician practice. One of the physicians was interested in participating in a clinical trial, and asked her to learn how to run it.

“They sent somebody up from Florida and they trained me on how to do clinical trials,” she said.

After several years of organizing clinical trials for the doctors, Ward decided to strike out on her own and founded Medicor. It was a hectic time during which she regularly worked 60-hour weeks.

But Medicor is now an established company, administering clinical trials in areas such as diabetes, COPD, psoriasis and pain. Ward said she tries to focus on trials which address medical problems common in Northern Ontario.

She said she's also very scrupulous about ethics when choosing projects. If Ward doesn't think a trial is appropriate or if one of the physicians she works with raises questions, she'll turn it down.

“You know, it is a very serious thing,” she said. “You're giving an investigational product to human beings. Because of my nursing background, patient safety is always paramount.”

Beyond working with local physicians, Medicor is also managing the Northern Ontario School of Medicine's participation in the Maternal Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) study.

Starting during pregnancy, mothers were tested to see what kind of chemicals were in their bodies, and after their babies were born, they were tested to see if the same chemicals are present in their systems.

The babies are also being tested for cognitive milestones in an attempt to see how these chemicals are affecting them.

“I'm really pleased to be part of that,” Ward said. “It's a huge study, and really good research.”

Medicor will soon expand to North Bay.

Ward explains that Health Sciences North is now doing all of its clinical trial management in-house, so she's decided to expand her business down Highway 17 and work with the hospital there.

She expects she'll hire another 10 people in North Bay.

As Medicor enters its ninth year in business, it is also becoming known worldwide.

“I work closely with global teams to see firstly if we should do the study in Canada, and if it's determined yes, then we do another layer of feasibility study to see if it should be done in Sudbury,” Ward said.

“I'm getting international recognition, which really surprised me, because I just do my work.”

To learn more about Medicor, visit www.medicorresearch.com.