The global clinical trial management system (CTMS) market is set to show double-digit growth, reaching $1.85 billion by 2019, and will be integrated more closely with healthcare data.
That is the prediction of a new report by Persistence Market Research, which says that the CTMS market was worth $844 million in 2013 and will grow at an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% in the coming years.
Increasing R&D investment levels by life science companies and contract research organizations is one driver, but uptake will also accelerate thanks to the integration of CTMS with hospital information systems (HIS)—including electronic health records (EHRs)—that that help clinicians manage medical and administrative information.
Linking the two "provides more accurate and time saving documentation," say the report authors, whilst also assisting in enrolling patients into trials, seeing if a proposed deign is feasible based upon the available pool of patients and auto-populating forms with data to avoid redundant and costly data abstraction.
For example, Yale University—which has its own in-house CTMS called OnCore—has been pioneering the integration of the system with EHRs, including setting standards to move information back and forth that it hopes will allow similar systems to be introduced at other investigator sites.
It says the effort is helping to "improve patient safety, reduce errors, and improve the research environment for institutions…regardless of the systems of vendors they use."
Other trends highlighted in the report include that while some CROs such as Parexel, Quintiles and Clinipace will continue to develop and push their own CTMS platforms, others may seek to divest systems in order to focus their resources on winning clinical trial contracts.
Meanwhile, it notes that while North America has traditionally been a hotspot for clinical trials, "regulatory and legal considerations and the clinical trial market has shifted … to developing countries such as India and China," which have a lower cost-base. As a result, Asia is the fastest-growing region in the CTMS market, it says.
Meanwhile, in Europe strong market growth is taking place in Central and Eastern Europe and—due to governmental support and funding for biomedical sciences—Germany has become a preferred location for clinical trials.