McDougall Scientific is the latest biopharmaceutical supplier to sign up to the global SAFE-BioPharma digital identity and signature standard.

Digital signing, used for secure paperless transactions, eliminates the time and costs associated with printing, handling and storing paper documents.

McDougall Scientific is a Toronto-based pharmaceutical contract research organisation (CRO), providing compliant technical backbones for clinical research, covering statistics, data management and document management.

McDougall has joined the SAFE-BioPharma Association, a non-profit association that created and manages the global SAFE-BioPharma digital identity and signature standard for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. McDougall is the first CRO to join the Association.

The SAFE-BioPharma digital identity and signature standard is now used by virtually every big biopharmaceutical company for identity management and for digital signing.

"We plan to introduce SAFE-BioPharma digital signatures to our clients and help them move to fully electronic document management systems," said Janet McDougall, president of McDougall Scientific.

As a member of SAFE-BioPharma, McDougall employees will be able to apply secure signatures digitally to electronic documents they are dealing with on behalf of clients.