Tata Consultancy Services' New CDTS

Harnessing information technology for healthcare, Tata Consultancy Services has unveiled a clinical drug trial management system that could reduce a drug's time to market and lower the trial's costs.

Introducing TATA CTMS at the BIO 2004, Tata Consultancy Services said the system will capture data during all phases of a drug's consideration. It is a state-of-the-art, integrated system for managing and accelerating clinical drug trials.

'TATA CTMS is a vast improvement over current clinical trial software, which often separates information into distinct categories, making it more difficult for company researchers, outside doctors and regulators to spot overall benefits and problems,' said Ray Hanson, director of TCS America's Life Sciences and Healthcare Practice. 'TATA CTMS puts all the pieces together, improving analysis and identification of anomalies and better gauging the efficacy of drugs.'

The program securely integrates processes across all phases of the clinical trial: protocol building/compliance, patient recruitment, capturing patient experience, generation of eCRF/EDCsafety information, investigation results, trial management, and site/sponsor communication/query resolution.

It can help a single pharmaceutical company consolidate clinical trial data as well as multiple companies to collaborate and share data because it captures more data, in a more centralised and systematic way, than current methods. It enables drug companies to present clinical trial data more quickly and more thoroughly to the FDA and to doctors. Using TATA CTMS, drug companies can better prepare for the FDA's review of clinical trials and could also speed a drug's time to market throughout testing, trial and FDA approval. The shorter duration would reduce the trial's cost.

TCS has been demonstrating a prototype of TATA CTMS to pharmaceuticals companies, as it seeks to tap into a market for software and services for clinical trials that Silico Research estimates is worth $874m