Overview and How It Works
The SunshineMD Database brings together publicly reported data, including information mandated by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Open Payments), and organizes it into a usable foundation for clinical development teams.
Rather than presenting raw transparency records, SunshineMD applies data-cleaning, reconciliation and enrichment methods to connect investigators to the studies they’ve worked on and how they’ve performed over time.
The result is a near-census view of U.S. clinical trial investigators dating back to 2013.
How we turn data into usable insight
The SunshineMD Database follows a three-step process:
Collect
SunshineMD aggregates publicly reported data that reflect investigator participation in U.S. clinical trials. This includes information tied to investigator activity, payment amounts, study involvement and sponsor relationships over time.
Clean and reconcile
Raw transparency data contains inconsistencies, duplication and incomplete records.
SunshineMD applies systematic data cleaning and reconciliation to:
- Normalize investigator identities
- Resolve inconsistencies across records
- Connect related data points into coherent investigator histories
This step is critical to making the data reliable and usable.
Enrich and structure
Once reconciled, the data is enriched and structured to support analysis and search.
This allows teams to:
- Identify investigator experience by indication or therapeutic area
- Review historical study participation
- Compare investigator activity across studies and sponsors
- Strongly correlate payments to actual enrollments
The database is designed to support feasibility, site selection and downstream analysis without requiring custom data work.
Where the database fits into feasibility and site selection
Clinical development teams use the SunshineMD Database to:
- Build and validate investigator lists
- Assess investigator experience across prior studies
- Bring historical performance context into feasibility decisions
- Reduce uncertainty in early trial planning
The database serves as the foundation for SunshineMD’s broader performance insights, including the Sunshine Score.
Learn how the Sunshine Score builds on the database