MIT, Harvard and Crowdcast Partner to Forecast Success of Breast Cancer Drug Clinical Trials
Pharmer's Market, the First Prediction Market for Pharmaceuticals, Leverages Participants' Collective Intelligence to Predict Drug Success
REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - October 9, 2009) - Crowdcast, along with faculty from MIT and Harvard, today announced the launch of the Pharmer's Market, a prediction market that harnesses collective intelligence to predict the likelihood of breast cancer drugs succeeding through the three phases of drug clinical trials.
The first of its kind, the Pharmer's Market was created by Ragu Bharadwaj, Eric von Hippel, and Fiona Murray of MIT's Sloan School of Management with Peter Coles of Harvard Business School serving as an advisor. The prediction market was developed using Crowdcast's patented Team Intelligence Platform, which anonymously collects intelligence from a diversified group of people who have insight into breast cancer drug trials.
In addition to helping predict the outcome of clinical trials, the Pharmer's Market will also help doctors and patients gain insights into the safety and efficacy of specific drugs at the early stages of clinical trials beyond information that is publicly available.
"Today's pharmaceutical industry is faced with exponentially rising costs, but fewer drugs than ever are approved," said Ragu Bharadwaj of MIT's Sloan School of Business. "One cause is the lack of information sharing, and the Pharmer's Market will redress this by allowing people to aggregate and share information and solutions based on their own experiences and knowledge, creating a superior prediction model. Our aim is to be a resource for the pharmaceutical community, so that researchers can tap existing knowledge and stop duplicating efforts and wasting resources, preventing delays in drug development."
The Pharmer's Market will launch with six drugs currently in clinical trials for the treatment of breast cancer, and will use the intelligence of the pharmaceutical and medical community at large to predict the success likelihoods that the drugs progress through the phases of testing. The market will be open to the public, and participants include drug researchers at pharmaceutical companies, chemists, researchers in academia and the government, pharmaceutical financial analysts and the greater medical community. Members of the market will also be able to participate in a community forum and provide comments on their trades.
"Prediction Markets utilize the wisdom of the crowd to forecast future outcomes with high accuracy," said Leslie Fine, Chief Scientist of Crowdcast. "The system works by aggregating and balancing collective intelligence through a prediction market, rewarding and empowering those contributing accurate forecasts. For the pharmaceutical community, prediction markets are an innovative way to harness and share information that will help speed drug development and predict outcomes of clinical trials."
The Pharmer's Market is now live -- to participate, please visit: http://pharmersmarket.crowdcast.com
About Crowdcast
Crowdcast is a leading provider of collective intelligence and prediction market solutions that dynamically aggregate employee, partner, and key stakeholder knowledge to deliver more accurate and insightful forecasts. Founded by an expert in enterprise forecasting, the Crowdcast team includes a leading researcher in prediction market design and experienced executives and staff from the enterprise software industry. Leading organizations using Crowdcast include: Electronic Arts, General Motors, NERA, and CFO Magazine. For more information, visit www.crowdcast.com.