By Niki Kutac, VP of Product Development and Marketing
Over the past decade we have drawn attention to the issues inherent in the frequent practice of merging or integrating eClinical products. However, because major competing vendors almost uniformly utilize an acquisition strategy to expand their product offerings, clients are led to believe that the resulting costs and complications are unavoidable. It is often difficult to change the public perception of inefficiency from a cost to be absorbed, to a problem to be fixed. Datatrak discovered and addressed it almost ten years ago.
Giving a Name to the Solution
We have spoken often on the glaring inefficiencies that product integration has brought into the clinical trials space, and how Datatrak through proper planning has avoided them. The Datatrak Unified Platform removes complexities in clinical trials, so all solutions work seamlessly together. That’s what we refer to as the Unified Platform. The innovative nature of Datatrak is precisely why we differentiate our products by describing them as Unified rather than integrated.
Unfortunately the meaning ‘unified’ is often muddied in our industry. Our competitors have generally engaged in the practice of acquiring and integrating new products in an effort to create a full offering of eClinical software. When we say unified, we mean something very specific.
We built, rather than bought, our products. Our system operates off a single database, providing a true Single Source of Truth. We feel that our superior architecture gives us the freedom and agility to improve our software to reflect the needs of our clients; Datatrak solutions are not bound by the rigid infrastructure endemic to many of our competitors’ solutions inhibited by years of legacy integrations.
Creating the Best Possible Solution
Datatrak, provider of the first cloud-based solution on the market, had a fully unified EDC and IRT system up and running in 2005. The fact is that from our early beginnings, our products have been built by the industry’s preeminent thought leaders. We did not merely respond to the needs of the market, we anticipated them.
The Unified Future – Today
Datatrak has developed a truly Unified Platform.
There are many benefits to our Unified Platform. In particular, I draw attention to two items. The first is Lower Total Cost of Ownership. The simple fact that we are a unified eClinical solution is why our cost of ownership is typically lower than integrated systems. A superior product should save you money. Competitors with an Integrated (and not a unified) product customarily transfer the costs of inefficiency to their customers either directly in terms of price, or indirectly by way of unplanned expenses.
The second is the cost of change, and how it is directly related to the requirement of increased study agility. Clinical trials are conducted in a tumultuous environment, and unplanned challenges can often be the most costly. A proper eClinical suite should allow a client to respond to change quickly and at minimal cost. Having a unified system is what allows Datatrak to outperform in this capacity. In integrated systems, migration is generally a requirement because disparate systems traditionally use separate database sources. The Datatrak Enterprise Cloud system has only one database, so there is no need to perform data migration. Your study is available to work in during a mid-study change, including access to and working in and with casebooks. So your study can implement changes as required while the work of the trial continues. These are some of the benefits of our unified platform available today: Datatrak Enterprise Cloud.
Transforming the Clinical Trials of Today, Planning for the Trials of Tomorrow
The latent benefits in Datatrak Enterprise Cloud save both time and money, and these savings are passed on to our customers across the lifecycle of their trials. By having a platform unburdened by legacy integrations, we are left with the freedom to respond to the demands of a rapidly changing clinical landscape. Our system was built by forward-thinking minds. By anticipating the need for a unified platform, we have been able to deftly avoid this arena of complications. While competitors have struggled to piece together Single Sign-on, we will continue to provide innovative, intuitive utilities with unparalleled user configurability. With the exploding costs of clinical research, the industry must look to technology as a source to increase productivity. Datatrak combined the experience of our Executive Management Team, with over 100+ combined years of Life Sciences experience and a deep understanding of clinical trials, with technology visionaries. Their combined expertise resulted in a system that addresses the needs of clinical trials.
Unification is, for us, not a feature, but a design philosophy. Our efficiencies of design and levels of reliability cannot be replicated by key competitors today because the choice to build a unified system must be made on Day 1. There was a time not so long ago when the decision-makers in the pharmaceutical industry had to make the hard call to revolutionize the way that we conduct clinical trials. No one will deny that introducing advanced IT to the industry has had profound effects, but this process does not stop at the point solutions of EDC, RTSM or CTMS. They are confronted with the new reality that a single end-to-end system, a unified platform, is needed to keep this giant engine running at full steam.
Choices of technology in the coming years will effectively define the efficiency of the industry at large. The choice before you, the decision makers, is this: “In whom do you place your trust, the market-leaders who appear to only now address the issue manufactured by their own short-sighted business moves, or the vendor that anticipated these needs, from the beginning of the EDC market?” You can buy in to the promises of a unified future tomorrow, or you could instead realize the benefits of the future, with the Datatrak Enterprise Cloud today.