BURLINGTON, Mass., June 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- inVentiv Health, Inc., offering best-in-class clinical, commercial and consulting services, today launched inVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions (iCTRS) to solve the costly problem of identifying, recruiting and retaining patients and trial investigators.
Patient recruitment is one of the biggest obstacles in clinical research, and a major cause of delays in developing promising new treatments. The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development found enrollment rates over 13 years have dropped 20%. Nearly half of physician sites fail to meet their enrollment targets, and more than 10% of sites never enroll a single patient. Clinical trial patient drop-out rates stand now at 52%.
Nearly 30% of the time spent in clinical trials is dedicated to patient recruitment and enrollment, making it the most time intensive of all tasks. A typical Phase III trial averaging three years requires nine months for recruitment. The costs are huge. The recruitment bottleneck is impacting scientific progress and slowing the performance of companies that patients count on to deliver the next generation of medicines.
iCTRS was created to remove the bottlenecks in ways that have never been done before. The new service helps trial sponsors accelerate recruitment, improve site productivity and reduce study timelines. It merges inVentiv's vast proprietary database, communications expertise rooted in behavioral research and innovative digital technologies and social media to aid clinical trial sponsors under pressure to speed drug development.
"The magnitude of the challenge prompted us to identify the resources within our organization that could help solve a problem that all sponsors face," said Paul Meister, Chief Executive Officer of inVentiv Health. "We pulled apart the problem, focused our diverse capabilities on solving each part and the result is a major step forward in recruitment and retention.
"We believe we will be able to significantly reduce the cost of trials, as well as improve time to market."
Although begun only three months ago, iCTRS already has contracts with three pharmaceutical and biotech companies to do planning and recruitment for four clinical trials.
CAPABILITIES AND RESOURCES
As part of inVentiv Health, iCTRS has the most comprehensive array of data assets and analytics capabilities in the industry. iCTRS uses technology to aggregate data from which algorithms quickly identify the highest-performing investigators around the world a huge advance over the current state of manually aggregating data.
The algorithms use data from a rich variety of sources such as integrated claims information from more than 900,000 physicians and 115,000 investigators. It also uses current, longitudinal prescription information from more than 100 million U.S. patients. The same expertise and technology underpin enrollment modeling and risk management. iCTRS technology enables a detailed and real-time view of recruitment, enrollment and retention actionable information for sponsors and sites.
Finally, no other company has such deep communications expertise applied to patient recruitment. Recruitment strategies are rooted in behavioral research conducted by inVentiv scientists and communications expertise from experts in healthcare communications. Understanding the patient journey is key to retention, commercialization and adherence.
PARTNERSHIPS
To enhance its offerings, iCTRS has formed partnerships that enhance its ability to effectively reach physicians and patients and expedite enrollment. Among the recent partners are Medikly, PatientsLikeMe and Mytrus.
Medikly's multichannel digital technology helps pharmaceutical companies identify, engage, and retain clinical trial investigators by applying a real-time view of doctors based on their preferences and behaviors online. Pharmaceutical companies gain a rich, multidimensional understanding of a physician's specific areas of interest, preferred method of communications, influence within their community, and a great deal more. Such insights help overcome barriers between those wanting to recruit investigators and the physician.
The PatientsLikeMe partnership will help bring more people more quickly into medical research and clinical trials. PatientsLikeMe's 200,000 members share information and experiences on more than 1,500 different diseases and conditions. Members interested in the development of new treatments can now become even more active in medical research by accessing information on clinical trials conducted by inVentiv's pharmaceutical customers.
In March, inVentiv Health announced that it had taken an equity stake in Mytrus, Inc., a pioneer in "virtual clinical trials" and technologies such as electronic informed consent to improve trial efficiency. Mytrus has been expanding the boundaries of traditional clinical trial research with the first all-electronic, home-based clinical trial to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and IRB (Institutional Review Boards) approval.
"The launch of inVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions is another example of our commitment to creating unique solutions that tap some of the broadest global expertise in the healthcare services industry," said Jim Carroll, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing. "We have created lean, adaptable services to deliver faster and more predictable outcomes to life science companies that want to accelerate trial completion and position their product for market success."
To learn more about inVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions, contact jim.carroll@inventivhealth.com or 781-425-6645. Additional information is also available at www.inventivhealth-ictrs.com.
About inVentiv Health
inVentiv Health, Inc. is a leading global provider of best-in-class clinical, commercial and consulting services to companies seeking to accelerate performance. inVentiv offers convergent services that deliver extraordinary outcomes to clients whose goal is improving human life. In 40 countries around the world, inVentiv's 13,000 employees help clients rapidly transform promising ideas into commercial reality. inVentiv clients include more than 550 pharmaceutical, biotech and life sciences companies, as well as companies that now see health as part of their mission. inVentiv Health, Inc. is privately owned by inVentiv Group Holdings, Inc., an organization sponsored by affiliates of Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P., Liberty Lane Partners and members of the inVentiv management team. For more information, visit http://www.inventivhealth.com.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks that may cause our performance to differ materially. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views about future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We wish to caution readers that certain important factors may have affected and could in the future affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Such factors include, without limitation: the impact of our substantial level of indebtedness on our ability to generate sufficient cash to fulfill our obligations under our existing debt instruments or our ability to incur additional indebtedness; the impact of customer project delays and cancellations and our ability to sufficiently increase our revenues and manage expenses and capital expenditures to permit us to fund our operations; the impact of the consummation of any future acquisitions; the impact of any change in our ratings and the ratings of our debt securities on our relationships with customers, vendors and other third parties; the impact of any additional leverage we may incur on our ratings and the ratings of our debt securities; our ability to continue to comply with the covenants and terms of our senior secured credit facilities and to access sufficient capital under our credit agreement or from other sources of debt or equity financing to fund our operations; the impact of any default by any of our credit providers; our ability to accurately forecast costs to be incurred in providing services under fixed price contracts; our ability to accurately forecast insurance claims within our self- insured programs; the potential impact of pricing pressures on pharmaceutical manufacturers from healthcare reform initiatives or from changes in the reimbursement policies of third-party payers; our ability to grow our existing client relationships, obtain new clients and cross-sell our services; the potential impact of financial, economic, political and other risks, including interest rate and exchange rate risks, related to conducting business internationally; our ability to successfully operate new lines of business; our ability to manage our infrastructure and resources to support our growth; our ability to successfully identify new businesses to acquire, conclude acquisition negotiations and integrate the acquired businesses into our operation, and achieve the resulting synergies; the resolution of purchase price adjustment disputes in connection with our recent acquisitions and related impacts; any disruptions, impairments, or malfunctions affecting software as well as excessive costs or delays that may adversely impact our continued investment in and development of software; the potential impact of government regulation on us and on our client base; our ability to comply with all applicable laws as well as our ability to successfully adapt to any changes in applicable laws on a timely and cost effective basis; our ability to recruit, motivate and retain qualified personnel, including sales representatives; the possibility that client agreements will be terminated or not renewed; any potential impairment of goodwill or intangible assets; consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry; changes in trends in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries or in pharmaceutical outsourcing, including initiatives by our clients to perform services we offer internally; our ability to convert backlog into revenue; the potential liability associated with injury to clinical trial participants; the actual impact of the adoption of certain accounting standards; and our ability to maintain technological advantages in a variety of functional areas, including sales force automation, electronic claims surveillance and patient compliance. Holders of our debt instruments are referred to reports provided to investors from time to time and the offering memoranda provided in connection with the issuance of our notes for further discussion of these risks and other factors.
SOURCE inVentiv Health, Inc.
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