A typical data monitoring committee (DMC) for a clinical trial sponsored by the drug industry consists of clinicians and quantitative scientists, who are general from academic institutes and appointed by the sponsor. The committee members are reimbursed for their time spent on the DMC by the sponsor directly. These create obvious conflict of interest. If the DMC is assigned to a specific study, the members may not have access to the efficacy and safety information from similar studies conducted in the entire development program for the same compound. When there is an adaptive component in the trial, it is rather difficult to implement it by the DMC alone without much input from the sponsor during the study. Generally the sponsor would provide a list of scenarios for adaptation in advance as the guidance of DMC’s decision makings. These setups are not ideal. In this talk, we explore alternatives for conducting the data monitoring without losing the integrity of the study or much conflict of interest.