After being rebuffed earlier this year, Parexel reached deeply into its wallet to attempt to buy England’s ClinPhone. Price: $192 million. Some $300 million in debt will be raised to make the purchase possible; regulatory approval will also be required. Here’s a wire service story. 

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the deal. Parexel is implicitly acknowledging the importance of two ClinPhone assets: a market-leading interactive voice response system (IVRS) and electronic data capture (EDC), a technology in which the Waltham, Mass. firm had invested sparingly.

Big Bid

“The offer price represents a premium of 86 percent to the ClinPhone share price on the London Stock Exchange of 72.5 pence on February 14, 2008,” Parexel’s news release on the deal states.

“As the market embraces a total eclinical solution, we believe clients will realize even more significant process efficiencies, greater visibility across studies, improvements in data quality, and accelerated decision-making,” Parexel chairman and CEO Josef von Rickenbach says in the release.

We’re working on getting more information. Here is an earlier ClinPage post on the acquisition when it was only a rumor.

One-Stop Shopping

Wall Street reaction to the deal will be interesting to watch. Some analysts will no doubt be heartened by a Parexel-ClinPhone acquisition, simply because the sponsor community is searching for ways to simplify outsourcing relationships, and Parexel would now be able to meet every major technology need of the industry-sponsored research community.

In additional to well-regarded systems for medical imaging and clinical trial management, Parexel has long specialized in combining streams of data in clinical trials, and would be better positioned to do so in the coming eclinical era with ClinPhone than without.

Tech, Services Blend

The deal also poses risks, of course. It’s hard to imagine ClinPhone’s current CRO customers staying put, and keeping their business at a company that is now a rival—Parexel. The logic of the deal probably pivots, in the end, on the increased attractiveness of Parexel to sponsors outweighing the unappealing aspects of the deal to CRO customers of ClinPhone. Technology vendors that formerly worked happily with Parexel (or its Perceptive Informatics division) will be assessing their competitive position with the new company should the deal be approved.

No matter how the saga ends, the convergence of technology and services in clinical trials continues. Today’s announcement could well make other CROs interested in snapping up a handful of other EDC suppliers. The question is whether financially weak EDC players (there are a few) will be acquisition targets. Small but ascendant firms like OmniComm might also be indirect beneficiaries of a Parexel-ClinPhone deal.

It’s worth noting that privately held Quintiles is also interested in ClinPhone, as this news story notes.