Another CRO is stepping up its software development capabilities. PRA International announced today its buyout of clinical research software outfit Kinship Technologies, based in Chennai, India. Financial terms of the deal weren't revealed.
As more data from clinical trials is managed and analyzed electronically, PRA's purchase brings it Kinship's EXACT software, which the company says gives users the ability to build programs for data extraction and transformation, statistical reporting and electronic publishing with "limited code writing." The buyout also enhances PRA's previous efforts develop software for improving the efficiency of clinical trials.
Indeed, CROs are among the biggest users of eClinical software along with trial sponsors such as drug companies and study sites where data on patients in clinical trials are gathered. And life sciences companies are under pressure to squeeze as much value out of their development dollars as possible, making the potential efficiencies offered by eClinical software as important as ever.
"The process of how data is converted and analyzed in our industry has remained unchanged for over 20 years; with the increasing prevalence of CDISC standards, we felt the need to significantly change the process to create a more efficient delivery model and provide our customers more validation and visibility into our work," said Steve Powell, PRA's senior VP of clinical informatics and late phase services, in a press release. "When we found Kinship Technologies and implemented the EXACT system, we knew we had discovered a game changer."
CROs are no strangers to the eClinical arena. Parexel International ($PRXL), for instance, has a wholly owned subsidiary, Perceptive Informatics, that provides electronic data capture (EDC) and other types of software for streamlining trials.
- here's the PRA International release