Perceptive Informatics, an eClinical solutions provider, today announced that its Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) is available as an on-demand, software-as-a-service (SaaS) application to plan, administer and track clinical trial activities.

eClinical solutions are electronic processes for automating the management and conduct of clinical trials to replace manual, paper-driven systems, according to wikipedia.org.

The SaaS-based CTMS is hosted, maintained and supported entirely by Perceptive Informatics, which is a subsidiary of PAREXEL International Corporation. SaaS is an application hosted on a remote server and accessed through the Internet, or more commonly referred to as “cloud computing,” according to tech-faq.com, a technology blog.

“Biopharmaceutical companies continue to seek ways to decrease development costs by improving overall efficiency,” said Nicholas Richards, vice president of product management at Perceptive Informatics.  “SaaS-enabled technologies are experiencing tremendous acceptance because they can be rapidly implemented, eliminate up-front capital investment, and decrease associated maintenance. The CTMS solution in a SaaS delivery model is designed for organizations that can benefit from improving clinical trial productivity and reducing operational and IT costs.”

Drug development time has gone up from 11.6 years in the 1970s to 14.9 years in 2001, reducing patent-protected market life and shaving billions off potential revenues, according to pharmalicensing.com. Pharmaceutical companies face many more challenges today than in the past, including rising R&D costs, price pressure, generic competition and decreasing R&D output, as reported at the Web site.   Anything that can help them get trials up and off the ground quickly lead to reduced costs and better efficiency.

Some experts believe that pre-clinical drug studies provide a useful starting place for determining whether a new drug is clinically promising, but that also takes time, according to a story at sciencedaily.com, based on a study by McGill University in Canada.

The Perceptive Informatics SaaS-Based CTMS solution accelerates the drug development process by allowing sponsors to save time when clinical studies begin due to a rapid, flexible, scalable and secure deployment approach supported by Perceptive's eClinical platform. A subscription option provides users with the benefits of an on-premise solution without the need for up-front investments or additional internal resources, according to the press release at prnewswire.com.

The CTMS solution is part of the Perceptive Informatics eClinical Suite, which provides systems for real-time data interchange while allowing diverse applications to work together, and users to seamlessly share clinical trial data without having to duplicate activities.

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