North Carolina’s etrials announced that existing customers had awarded it four new projects worth $1.7 million. The upcoming projects cover almost 300 sites across North and South America as well as in Europe, and will include over 3,500 individual subjects. The trials will deploy etrials’ eDiary, EDC and IVR solutions in four therapeutic areas—rheumatology, otolaryngology, endocrinology, and neonatology. “These projects clearly demonstrate the competitive advantage and value that our existing pharmaceutical customers find in our single source eClinical software solutions,” said Chip Jennings, president and CEO.

BioWisdom, a UK-based provider of Intelligence Networks for the pharmaceutical industry, announced that a Japanese pharmaceutical company–Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation has signed an agreement for BioWisdom KnowledgeScan. The software supports health care-related decision-making with a rapid and systematic analysis of available data. Said Julie Barnes, CSO of BioWisdom: “We see this as further confirmation of the application of BioWisdom’s Sofia technology and indeed BioWisdom KnowledgeScan to support business-critical decision making.”

Phase Forward announced the release of Central Designer, a trial design tool. The software allows study component reuse, improves global collaboration and work flow and provides an efficient way to incorporate standards. A key differentiator is the product’s ability to quickly design and review complex studies in an easy-to-view graphical layout.

Are the glory days of the PC behind us? Walt Mossberg, technology guru of the Wall Street Journal, says so. Cell phones, he insists, are where the IT future is. Mossberg flaunted an Apple iPhone during a recent speech but said he had not made up his mind on whether it would get a good review. “The PC’s been a big deal,” Mossberg says in this article. “It has peaked. This is the next level or elevation of the cellphone,” he said of the iPhone. “Not because it’s better or necessarily better than your Blackberry … but this runs a real computer operating system.”

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