Welcome message from the MCC Central Lab Steering Committee

Over 15 biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies and 6 central laboratories, including Covance's sponsorship and other central laboratories’ detailed critique and feedback have allowed the Metrics Champion Consortium (MCC) to produce a solid set of performance metrics that have already started some wonderful dialogue between Sponsor and Service Provider. Consistent with MCC’s mission, the utilization of these metrics will be the beginning of new relationships between companies as they seek to interpret, understand, and respond creatively to the opportunities that the metrics reveal.

MCC will be collecting these positive stories and sharing them at future MCC events. These metrics will serve as a tool to enable us to jointly encourage performance improvement, effectiveness, and efficiency in an industry under great pressures to improve. As more and more companies use these metrics, MCC anticipates great ideas to emerge. Shortly, MCC will be communicating a process and time line for revising these metrics in the future. In the mean time, please consider joining the MCC organization and participating in the Central Lab Performance Metrics Working Group. This will ensure that you have a future voice in the direction of the Central Lab Performance Metrics.

Invitation to Join a MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics Work Group

The MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics Steering Committee would like to extend an invitation to MCC members to participate in the MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics initiative in 2008. The MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics Steering Committee convened the Metrics Definition Refinement work group in late 2007 and is preparing to launch two new sponsor/service provider work groups during Q1 in 2008.  These three MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics work groups focus on the following key areas:

• WG 1: Metrics Definition Refinement - This work group reviewed the MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics (version 1.0) and refined the definitions, where needed. This work group has completed a review of the current metrics and may reconvene in late 2008.
• WG 2: Data Collection Tool Development – This work group will discuss how sponsors are collecting /service providers are reporting MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics (version 1.0) and explore developing a set of data reporting templates.
• WG 3: Implementation Shared Learning – This work group will discuss issues related to implementing and utilizing MCC metrics within individual organizations as well as Sponsor / Service Provider partnerships.

You and your colleagues are invited to participate in the work groups as work group participants.  Typically, work groups meet once or twice a month via WebEx for 1-1 ½ hour sessions.  In addition, work group participants will have access to a SharePoint collaborative workspace area of the MCC website where the group can access documents and hold online discussions related their work group tasks. Please note that any given individual may participate in one or more working groups.  In addition, multiple individuals from the same company may participate in a single working group.

We look forward to working with all of you on this important initiative and hope you will decide to join a MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics work group.  Please complete the online work group application form or contact Linda Sullivan (lsullivan@metricschampion.org) if you are interested in joining a work group.

Please note that we are always willing to add additional work group members, but it is best to become involved as soon as possible so that we can benefit from your contributions from the inception of the initiative.  We will be kicking off work group activities in March 2008.

Thank you,

MCC Central Laboratory Performance Metrics Steering Committee