Fast Track Systems Accelerates Trial Planning; New TrialSpace Resource and Cost Estimator Enables Data-Driven Planning of Clinical Trial Resources and Costs

Business Wire, Dec 9, 2002

Business Editors & Health/Medical/High-Tech Writers

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 2002

Fast Track Systems, a clinical development optimization company, today announced the general availability of its TrialSpace(TM) Resource and Cost Estimator(TM), a unique, data-driven enterprise application to improve clinical trial planning. Using this innovative product, clinical trial professionals in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies can quickly and accurately estimate trial resources and costs at the project, program and portfolio levels, drawing from Fast Track's extensive, proprietary pharmaceutical industry data as well as their own experience.

Today, many companies store trial resource and cost information in divergent and incompatible formats across multiple departments, diverse therapeutic areas and dispersed geographic locations, making it difficult to access and use in a timely and accurate manner. With Resource and Cost Estimator, companies can quickly and easily apply individual resource and cost data in combination with Fast Track's industry benchmark data to create precise estimates in real time, providing managers with a dynamic approach to planning and resource allocation.

Through integration within Fast Track's TrialSpace platform, Resource and Cost Estimator provides any time, any place access, facilitating online collaboration among authorized users within a company in a highly secure, Web-based environment. Estimates can be created, distributed for review, and finalized within a single application, and can be updated immediately as dictated by internal and external situations.

"Rapid advances in science and technology are helping biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to produce a large number of drug candidates for clinical trials," said Jim McCord, CEO, Fast Track. "This crowded inventory of promising compounds, combined with the added cost and revenue pressures of blockbuster drugs coming off patent and thinner margins, makes well-planned, efficient and successful clinical trials more critical than ever. We understand the industry's need to focus on enabling technologies and data that, ultimately, help bring more new and better drugs to market faster at lower cost."

About Fast Track Systems

Fast Track Systems, a clinical development optimization company, provides the first and only systems approach to expediting clinical trial design, setup and execution. Drawing on the industry's largest database of protocols, disease indications, vendor contracts and performance benchmarks, Fast Track is enabling system-wide change in clinical development with products and services that streamline and improve the trial process. Fast Track's flagship TrialSpace platform provides an infrastructure for optimizing operational aspects of trial design and management, speeding time to market and reducing trial costs. Based in San Mateo, Calif., Fast Track also has offices in Ross, Calif., Fort Washington, Penn., and London, England. Fast Track serves the bio-pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and clients include most of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. For more information, please visit www.fast-track.com.