Brian McCourt serves as senior director of the Technology and Data Solutions group at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, providing leadership to informatics, data operations, and research IT systems supporting clinical research at the DCRI. He also co-leads the Clinical and Population Research IT Council for the Duke School of Medicine.
McCourt is an active leader in clinical research and a significant contributor to various professional societies, research programs, and standards development initiatives in clinical and translational research. He has 20 years of experience in clinical research supporting both academic investigator-initiated clinical research and industry-sponsored pharmaceutical and device projects, plus leading a variety of infrastructure initiatives supporting large research programs and organizations.
McCourt has long contributed to his field through professional societies and industry initiatives related to clinical research data. He served as the DCRI’s program manager for the Society for Clinical Data Management’s (SCDM) Education Program, a collaborative educational program supporting SCDM’s Certified Clinical Data Manager (CCDM) designation; actively participated in the NIH Roadmap Reengineering the Clinical Research Enterprise Informatics Working Group; and helped launch and served as founding co-chair of the HL7 Cardiology Special Interest Group and the HL7 Clinical Interoperability Council. These created necessary forums for developing consensus-based clinical data standards formally integrated with the technical specifications to enable interoperability among healthcare and research systems. McCourt has published and presented on data standards in clinical research networks, analytics opportunities in clinical trials, and the trends toward new technologies being adopted into research practice. He also actively mentors Duke graduate student conducting informatics and business strategy projects.
Prior to relocating to North Carolina to join the DCRI, McCourt worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He holds a graduate certificate in Clinical Informatics from Oregon Health and Science University and a bachelor’s degree from Saint Anselm College.