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CRF Box
Selects Palm Handhelds For Clinical Trials
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Feb. 20, 2002: Palm, Inc, and CRF Box Inc, a provider of real-time
patient feedback and mobile data-collection solutions for the global
pharmaceutical industry, today announced that CRF Box will acquire
approximately 9,600 Palm m125 and m500 handheld computers and SD
Cards over the course of this calendar year. The Palm handhelds
will be a key component of CRF Box's new front-end solution for
testing and evaluating new therapeutics in clinical trials.
The Palm handhelds are intended to help CRF Box customers accelerate
the approval of new pharmaceuticals and help to increase their overall
sales of marketed drugs by raising the quality and improving the
speed of data collection during clinical R&D. Drug companies
can spend as much as $500 million to bring a drug to market. CRF
Box, which has its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, optimizes
the global research and development, marketing and regulatory compliance
processes for pharmaceutical companies.
In a typical trial, patients are trained and then issued Palm handhelds
and SD Cards loaded with software applications that remind and prompt
them to
make entries in their trial diary. During the trial, the essential
patient data is transferred to the SD Cards. About the size of a
postage stamp, SD Cards are portable, removable and are capable
of holding all the time-sensitive records for the trial, including
a date and time stamp. This not only validates when the information
is entered but meets the requirements of the Federal Drug Administration
(FDA) that clinical data be permanently stored for verification
at a later date.
Spurring the pharmaceutical industry's introduction to mobile technology
is a 1997 decision by the FDA that provided clear guidelines on
how technology
should support clinical data capture and storage to streamline the
clinical trial process and improve the quality of data collected.
Both the FDA and its
European counterpart, EMEA (The European Agency for the Evaluation
of Medicinal Products), have found that electronic data capture
improves the quality of data by several hundred percent compared
to paper-based data-collection methods. The FDA findings prompted
companies such as CRF Box
to explore how new technologies could remove paper-driven, error-prone
processes for clinical trials. In 1998, CRF Box began developing
its application suite that was first deployed into a commercial
clinical program in 2000. Today, as one of the most experienced
providers, the CRF Box solution is connecting more than 30,000 patients
and 500 sites worldwide.
"In our experience, in the majority of deployments where our
pharmaceutical customers have a choice of platform, they prefer
Palm OS because it offers superior robustness and functionality
at a cost ensuring the highest ROI. Within this agreement, we are
able to provide even faster program setup times and provide increased
returns for our pharmaceutical customers," said Timo Ahopelto,
chief executive officer at CRF Box.
"We prefer Palm, specifically in the U.S. market, because
Palm handhelds are easy to use, offer expansion capabilities, and
provide a cost-effective deployment alternative," said Jaakko
Ollila, vice president of business development at CRF Box. "Patients
like the ease of use that Palm handhelds offer. Many patients are
elderly or disabled, and the user-friendly interface Palm handhelds
provide makes it easy to teach patients and investigators how to
use them."
The versatility of Palm handhelds also ensures usability in other
areas of data collection in the pharmaceutical industry. CRF Box
predicts that many people taking medications in the future will
be asked to report on their experiences using a handheld device.
Data collected from patients has immense value to pharmaceutical
drug marketers and also can be used to confirm compliance and patient
safety. Ultimately, the major benefactor in this data collection
is the patient.
"Palm handhelds with the Palm Expansion Card Slot are transforming
the clinical trials industry by giving solutions providers like
CRF Box a faster, more accurate and less costly way to conduct clinical
trials for their customers," said Pam Carlson, senior director,
business and government sales at Palm, Inc. "We are excited
to know that Palm handhelds will help CRF Box facilitate the efforts
of companies that are working to develop new medical treatments
for patients."
About CRF Box
CRF Box is leading the way with real-time patient connectivity and
mobile data capture solutions, accelerating the approval of new
therapeutics and increasing the sales of marketed products in the
biopharmaceutical industry. The company deploys its versatile wireless
and Internet technology to capture
and report data through PDAs, mobile/cellular phones, smart phones,
and Internet. The proven technology and service solution is in active
use in clinical trials, marketing studies, and compliance monitoring
with over 30,000 patients and 500 sites worldwide. Headquartered
in Helsinki, Finland, the company operates globally with regional
offices in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden.
For more information, visit http://www.crfbox.com.
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