The conventional wisdom is that a contract research organization (CRO) can't grow significantly it if it only works in the U.S. A global presence is obligatory for companies of a certain size. But not every CRO can afford to acquire other firms, especially in this economy. Which is why some diminutive, geographically disparate CROs are banding together.…more...

One of the more obscure—and intriguing—eclinical suites has just been sold by an Indian firm, Megasoft, to a U.S. computer consultancy. Trianz bought Afferenz, where Venkatesan Thangaraj has been president and one of the key strategists for some time. He's an ebullient, unusually cheerful executive. Thangaraj notes that in a less than glorious economy, his sales have…more...

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie care about drug development? They suddenly hunger to learn more about sponsor-CRO partnerships, PDUFA and Critical Path, and thus they showed up at the Drug Information Association's (DIA) 45th annual meeting to drink it all in? They are curious about science in addition to being gorgeous, rich and fertile? Wait—those were actually…more...

Most ClinPage readers have been to a conference where someone stands up and says, "Back in 1985, my company was doing some interesting things with computer punch cards. It was very close to what electronic data capture (EDC) became. We decided to unplug our system after a few years, but it worked well—better, in some ways, than…more...

“Give us the tools and we will finish the job,” Winston Churchill wrote to a friend. The year: 1941. World War II was just getting started. In 2009, thousands of web-based programs are sweeping over the entertainment, financial, and publishing industries. Do today’s clinical trial professionals have the tools to finish the job? Do they like the…more...

Whatever happened to Oracle Clinical, the database firm’s flagship application for clinical data management? It’s still there. As we noted a few days ago on this site, some Oracle customers in the sponsor and contract research organization (CRO) community are starting to acknowledge their usage of the company’s technology. But the company doesn’t make as much noise…more...

Honestly? The word has tormented us. We are talking about “eclinical.” The once-technical term is now routinely being referenced on calls with Wall Street analysts. Google has zillions of links to it. We finally decided to wrestle with it in our own way. To facilitate a serious journalistic contemplation of “eclinical,” we purchased an 80 oz. (5…more...

Is the word “eclinical” meaningless jargon? A good way for people to pay lip service to the future without actually building it? The people at Medidata Solutions have been trying to lend some definitional and operational clarity to what “eclinical” means. Two months ago, they announced Developer Central, a set of standards to facilitate the connection of…more...