Abstract: Methods and associated structure for automating clinical trial data gathering and management in the pharmaceuticals development industry. Clinical trial data is entered directly by examining clinicians through use of a remote computing system such as a handheld device, laptop computer or tablet PC. The system permits direct data entry by the clinician both as electronic form data that may be locally validated by the remote computing device as well as digitized images of handwritten or hand-drawn information. The remote computing device may forward the validated clinical data to a central servers system using secured communication and storage techniques. When the remote computing device is without communications to the central server, such as may be the case occasionally using wireless communication links, secure storage within the remote computing device may spool entered information in a secured local storage until such time as secured communications is re-established with the central server.