Founder of GCP Central, Marieke Meulemans, talks about the origin of the company.
“In 2003 I started my working life at Kendle on the Department quality control (QC)I checked the quality of the data from the drug trials, the files were completely checked, etc. To be able to do my job well, I got a courseGood Clinical Practice. The training was in a room with blue carpeting, in which I presented two PowerPointes with rules and legislation. That is all I can remember: the blue carpeted floors and listening to boring rules.
What I had wanted to learn was how the relationship lies between the directive, the law and practice. How do they fit together? When do I have to follow what? What is relevant for my work? This was not explained in the training, so I started looking for answers to my questions myself. ”
Learn from practice
From my QC role I started giving trainings to colleagues. I used examples from my work to give meaning to the GCP guideline in practice. It grew into a training department at the Kendle Clinical Pharmacology Unit (CPU) where I integrated as much practical experience as possible in the GCP and other training courses that we developed.
This period at Kendle, my position as training manager at Astellas afterwards and the various projects from my companyMM Interimall had to do with (online) training, learning systems, GCP or combinations thereof. GCP Central is a result of all this.
GCP is not about the rules but the thinking behind it
I notice that many people have an aversion to the abbreviation GCP. Poorly thought out, theoretical GCP training programs work that way. For example, in many trainings along the index of the GCP booklet the entire content is told. Too bad, because learning about GCP can be a lot of fun. It is your field of work in clinical research, a framework that you must give substance to. A GCP training should not be about the rules themselves, but about the idea behind them. If you understand that, and you learn where the edges of the framework lie, then you know how to make the right decisions at the difficult moments.
Learning made personal
The ultimate GCP training makes the GCP directive accessible and applicable. GCP Central has as its motto: learning made personalWith clear overviews, anecdotes, practical situations, exercises and application possibilities, we make GCP transparent for you as a person. You can put together your own training from different practical cases. That makes the training directly relevant to your specific role in the research. Our educationalists stand for it: if you learn about GCP in this way, it will stay much better.
A place to share experiences
With GCP Central I want to improve the quality of clinical research as a whole. Not only by offering people a relevant and personal GCP training, but also by giving them a place where they can share their knowledge. Would not it be nice if people would learn more from each other? In a good training, the lecturer’s story is not leading, but the experiences and questions of everyone in the ‘class’ are much more relevant. At GCP Central we therefore develop a unique learning environment, where you can find training material about doing clinical research for free and you can ask questions to other professionals. A knowledge platform that you take with you in your pocket.
