Almost one year ago, I sat down with David Kronfeld (Director, Corporate Development) for the first time. David was looking to strengthen the bridge between his team and the Product team by collaborating on interdepartmental projects. As part of our collaboration, we took control of Medidata’s Developer Central program.

Over the past year, David and I have worked to grow the community and provide greater value to the Developer Central members. I’d like to give a brief overview of what Developer Central is, the future of the program, and how you can become a member.

What is Medidata Developer Central?

Developer Central is Medidata’s online developer community. We are always looking for new ways to innovate and collaborate with individuals and companies committed to driving innovation in clinical research and Developer Central provides a unique way to fulfill that goal. Developer Central is dedicated to users of the Rave Web Services API. The community provides an array of resources to support integration efforts of existing systems with Medidata Rave and our platform.

More specifically, the Developer Central program provides members with:

• A community forum in which members can post questions and interact with hundreds of other developer central members
• Extensive documentation on the Rave Web Services API and best practices
• A test environment of Rave where members can quickly and easily develop and test their integrations

The Developer Central community is made up of 500+ members, from 225+ companies, in 20+ countries. These member companies include: technology providers, ISVs, service providers, Contract Research Organizations (CROs), academic institutions, pharmaceuticals companies, biotechs, and medical device manufacturers.

The Rave Web Services API is a robust set of calls that allow you to efficiently and effectively integrate with Medidata Rave. More specifically, the API allows you to push data to, pull data from, and edit data within Rave.

The API has been used for a wide variety of projects. For example, one company utilized the Rave Web Services API to extract data from Rave so that they could integrate their Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS). Another company extracted data from Rave directly into their Business Intelligence tool so that they could run analyses on the data. These are just two examples of the numerous ways the Rave Web Services API can be utilized.

A Vision for the Future of Developer Central

One of Medidata’s core principles is to always be at the forefront of innovation not only in life sciences, but also in the tech world as a whole. One of the ways we can accomplish this is by building out the ways in which our customers, as well as third parties, can interact with – and develop upon – our platform. More specifically, expanding upon the services provided by Developer Central will open numerous doors for people to create exciting and innovative technologies on our platform as well as provide new ways for Medidata to interact with customers and third parties.

There are a number of avenues through which Developer Central can be expanded upon. However, I’d like to focus on one in particular in this post: community. As mentioned above, today, Developer Central provides its members with access to the RWS API which has enabled scores of integrations, but there is still room for many more.

Today, Developer Central’s community offering is centered around a forum (MyMedidata), which offers a wealth of documentation on the API and its use cases. The community forum also provides a direct connection among Developer Central members as well as Medidata employees.

Looking to the future, Developer Central plans to host competitions or hack-a-thons for our members where the winners get an opportunity to pitch their projects to Medidata’s executive team. As the community continues to grow, we also plan to host a Medidata Developer Central Conference (MDCC). This conference would provide Developer Central members with the opportunity to collaborate and share ideas directly with Medidata engineers and other integrators, as well as providing a platform to share integrations with the community as a whole.

There are a number of ways in which the Developer Central program can be expanded upon to provide additional value to its members. What are some other ways you think the program should be enhanced?

How do I join Developer Central?

To join the Developer Central community, go to http://www.mdsol.com/innovate and follow the “Join Developer Central today” link. Upon completion of the online registration process, you will be granted access to the community forum and test environment within two business days.

Registration takes less than ten minutes, requires no special information, and best of all, Developer Central is 100% free to join. So what are you waiting for? Join today!