BioClinica and Cephalon ink data management deal

08-Feb-2010 - Last updated on 08-Feb-2010 at 11:10 GMT

BioClinica is providing Cephalon with end-to-end clinical data management services and hiring some of the biotech’s staff under a three-year, multi-million dollar deal.

Pharmas and biotechs are increasingly outsourcing substantial aspects of their businesses, leading to service providers being more like partners, and the BioClinica deal appears to follow this trend.

Under the terms of the agreement BioClinica will provide end-to-end clinical data management services to Cephalon. Specifically, this covers data management planning, clinical trial set up for electronic data capture (EDC), medical coding and training for study sites and investigators.

This is a significant expansion of the relationship between the companies, which began in 2003, and according to BioClinica marks a shift in its role from technology provider to “key services partner”.

Employing BioClinica in this way will help Cephalon “centralise and streamline its clinical data management operations through improved process standardisation, consistency of delivery, economies of scale and cost savings”, according to Mark Weinstein, CEO of the eClinical firm.

This is in keeping with Cephalon’s initiative to optimise operational efficiencies. The biotech is using other service partners as part of this initiative and BioClinica will work with these companies to ensure the operation runs smoothly.

To help provide these services BioClinica is hiring US-based data management staff currently employed by Cephalon. This removes the employees from Cephalon’s payroll and helps ensure BioClinica has knowledge of the biotechs operations.

EDC use

The deal also expands Cephalon’s use of BioClinica’s Express EDC. Cephalon will now use Express EDC as its default system for all clinical trials from Phase I through to Phase IV.

BioClinica designed Express EDC to be a comprehensive platform for organising the collection and dissemination of clean data. By using it BioClinica believes companies can improve the speed and quality of all aspects of the clinical trial process.