Media Coverage
Phase Forward Acquires Lincoln Technologies
BioIT World / eCliniqua
September, 2005
Last month, Phase Forward bought drug safety specialist Lincoln Technologies. This is the most intriguing clinical trial technology deal of the year.
With a price of $11 million, the acquisition demonstrates both Phase Forward's financial resources and the appeal of Lincoln Technologies' Java- and Web-based tools for the analysis and visualization of drug safety.
"When we talk about safety, we are willing to put our money and resources where our mouth is," says Phase Forward president and CEO Robert Weiler. "We are extremely excited about this. It redefines the market requirement for entering into an EDC [electronic data capture] or safety platform."
Surprisingly, unlike almost all EDC rivals, Phase Forward already owned a safety application to classify and manage adverse events in clinical trials. But on a technical level, Phase Forward liked Lincoln Technologies' ability to detect more subtle pharmacovigilance "signals" of drug safety issues amid the noise of thousands of reports. "Signal detection is moving to the forefront of customers' minds," says Weiler.
Weiler says Lincoln Technologies does more than just detect safety signals. "One of the things that attracted us to them is that they do the managing of the signal. How do you manage that signal through to resolution and track it and have the processes around that?"
Indeed, Lincoln functions almost as a safety-oriented contract research organization (CRO) for marquis customers like GlaxoSmithKline. Lincoln and GSK won a 2005 Best Practices Award from Bio-IT World for the safety system they built together.
Weiler says the sharp line between the company's EDC and safety systems will be maintained-the programs will still be sold separately. Lincoln's tools will be applied to data from third-party data management systems, for example. But for customers desiring end-to-end solutions, Weiler expects Lincoln's software will be used to view or analyze data from all Phase Forward's applications.
"We have an opportunity to take the data from an EDC system, hopefully [Phase Forward's] InForm, and run signal detection against that data using the same tools the FDA is using against the data," notes Weiler. "That's going to be a major differentiator for us in the safety market and the EDC market."
Weiler says Phase Forward was impressed by Lincoln Technologies' embrace of CDISC data standards: "We don't have, I don't think, the experience or the knowledge of CDISC that we would like to have. It just hasn't gotten into the fabric here as it has at Lincoln. They're going to be able to bring that to us and make it part of our fabric."
Vows Weiler: "That helps us overcome a somewhat real weakness that we have, not a perceived weakness. We are going to be as standards-centric and standards-focused as any company in the industry."
In some circles, it may take time for Phase Forward to ease doubts that its embrace of standards is in earnest. Elsewhere in the technology industry, dominant companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe typically prosper with proprietary data formats, then offer cynical support of standards just to twist the standards in their favor. But the hiring of the 30 highly regarded Lincoln Technologies staffers, who include several prominent CDISC volunteers, will likely be perceived as a sincere embrace of standards by Phase Forward.
Weiler remains adamant that this is not just spin. He notes that Phase Forward did participate in many CDISC efforts, but vows that future products will more seamlessly incorporate industry-wide data formats. "We always had religion," he says. "We might have been in the back pews. We truly believe we are going to be a leader if not the leader. As a leader, you have to have good products, but you have to be a leader in the standards."
With the deal, Phase Forward remains one of a handful of companies offering broad, integrated suites of software for clinical trials. Comparisons are tricky. The leading vendors have different applications, different ways to link them, and different pricing structures.
But perhaps only etrials (with no separate safety system) and Oracle Clinical (with no electronic patient diary) have a box of clinical tools as heavy as Phase Forward. Rivals aspiring to join the top tier of clinical technology suppliers could find it difficult to build or buy full-featured adverse event management systems. Still, for some clinical trials, drug safety can be well-handled within EDC systems.
Chan Russell was president of Lincoln; he'll be a VP at Phase Forward. Russell says a dozen acquirers were seriously considered. The decision to sell was made within the past year, and grew out of comments from customers. "We had customers who expected to be dealing with a larger supplier," Russell says. "We had to figure out how to grow internally a lot or combine with a larger company."
Clients have reacted with enthusiasm, Russell says. "The customers are ready for it. They were looking for us to do more, expecting more scale and European presence than we now have."
It would be hard to imagine two more different companies. Phase Forward has old, large, complex applications that (with appropriate custom-tailoring) can do just about anything a large pharmaceutical company requires. Lincoln Technologies prefers small, elegant, Web-based applications that use open standards.
But Russell says Phase Forward's culture has been changing, and that the two companies were a fit. "There's been a lot of evolution at Phase Forward," Russell says. "We see a lot of difference between Phase Forward in the early years and the present crew. They're more mature, a little less raw, more interested in listening to customers."
Russell acknowledges that a vital piece of the firm's appeal was its close relationship with the FDA. The agency has been both a sponsor of Lincoln's application-development research and a customer. Lincoln worked with the FDA to develop new ways to view and analyze safety data. The trend at the FDA is to rely more on electronic data and less on faxed or paper forms. "We see the FDA relationship as extremely important going forward," Russell says. "The specific funding in the future isn't as important as finding other ways of collaborating with them."
