M. Denis Connaghan is the new CEO at etrials. He’s been on the job a bit more than a month, since mid-November, and had just returned from meetings with clients on the west coast when we rang him up for a chat. “I didn’t hear, ‘we need another product from you.…more...

For years, we’ve been mocking it. There have been unkind remarks. Words like antique, prehistoric, pre-computer, Elizabethan. “Dickensian” is our favorite. We’re talking about ... paper. Then we found ourselves on the phone with a gentleman who makes a good argument for paper. “We provide immediate information for the sponsor or…more...

Is the contract research organization serious about owning technology? It’s not clear. A peek at the eight regular members of ACRO, the blue-chip Association of Contract Research Organizations, reveals that just two companies own industrial strength electronic data capture (EDC) solutions. The rest are choosing to partner with technology firms—or remain…more...

It had been a while since we checked in with Rhonda Facile—a renewable energy source who leads one of the most cutting-edge projects in the pharmaceutical industry. She’s the Clinical Data Acquisition Standards Harmonization (CDASH) project director at the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC). CDASH is an effort to get…more...

Anyone who attends a certain number of pharmaceutical industry conferences runs the risk of slipping into autopilot mode. One may hear an unrelenting chorus of the same phrases: process change and talk to the agency early and it’s important to communicate  and involve all members of your team…. Those phrases can…more...

Say you spent a lot of money on the latest and greatest electronic data capture (EDC) solution, and the software purveyors came out and set it up and put your staff through training for a day or two, and then ... shook your hand and disappeared. Now what? What to do…more...

As one of the more established companies providing electronic data capture (EDC), Phase Forward has only a handful of competitors of similar size and an impressive list of major customers. Just recently, Lilly announced it would be extending its use of Phase Forward’s InForm software. But it can be hard for…more...

Jules Mitchel might be a good source to consult if you doubt the continents of services and technology are tectonically colliding. With his wife, Joyce, Mitchel runs Target Health, a small New York contract research organization (CRO) that has always been keenly interested in building its own technology—both for the sake…more...

Is the industry ready to handle digital images by the gigabyte, linking them to other clinical trial data as a matter of routine? Bio-Imaging must have considered that question when buying Phoenix Data Systems for $24 million earlier this year, as did Parexel International when luring image czar George Mills from…more...

Aris Global, a provider of safety and regulatory solutions, announced the general release of agXchange IRT 6.0, a web-based solution for handling adverse event information in different formats. IRT stands for inbound receipt and triage. “Aris Global is committed to the extended electronic exchange gateway as the way organizations can take…more...