Business Services Industry
Phase Forward's Safety Data Mining Solution in Production At FDA; Tool Co-Developed with Lincoln Technologies and FDA Helps Agency to Assess the Safety of Drugs
Business Wire, Sept 8, 2005
WALTHAM, Mass. -- Phase Forward (NASDAQ: PFWD), a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, today announced the successful completion of recently acquired Lincoln Technologies' Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the FDA to develop advanced analytical tools for drug safety risk assessment. The project, which began in March of 2003 and involved participation by both the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), resulted in the development of the Web Visual Data Mining Environment (WebVDME) 5.1 feature set and user interface. FDA is implementing Lincoln's WebVDME system for production and use by safety evaluators and epidemiologists in CDER's Division of Drug Risk Evaluation (DDRE) and CBER's Division of Epidemiology.
The success of Lincoln's CRADA with the FDA is a result of several years of work by the FDA evaluating data mining and associated data visualization techniques as a tool to help safety evaluators analyze spontaneous reports of adverse reactions pertaining to drugs, biologics, and vaccines. Lincoln's data mining technology and specialized graphic visualization tools have been used by the FDA with its Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database of voluntary adverse reaction reports to help identify unexpectedly frequent combinations of drugs and events and to organize, identify, and interpret patterns in the data.
"We are pleased that our longstanding collaboration with the FDA has resulted in the addition of new data mining capabilities to complement their present pharmacovigilance practices," said Chan Russell, president of Lincoln Technologies. "In addition, our recent merger with Phase Forward brings the additional resources and operational infrastructure necessary to continue to support and build upon the use of WebVDME at the FDA."
The FDA is exploring other areas in which WebVDME may prove useful for safety surveillance, including medication error monitoring, assessment of safety in clinical trials, and signal detection in electronic longitudinal medical records.
About Phase Forward
Phase Forward is a leading provider of integrated data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety. The company offers proven solutions in electronic data capture (EDC), clinical data management (CDM), and adverse event reporting (AER) to help pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies bring needed drugs and therapies to market faster and more safely. Lincoln Technologies, acquired by Phase Forward in August of 2005, delivers solutions for pharmacovigilance, data standardization, and safety signal detection. The combined companies' products and services have been utilized in over 10,000 clinical trials involving more than 1,000,000 clinical trial study participants at over 220 organizations and regulatory agencies worldwide including: AstraZeneca, Biogen Idec, Boston Scientific, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Eli Lilly, FDA, GlaxoSmithKline, Guidant, MHRA, NIH, Procter & Gamble, Quintiles, Sanofi-Aventis, Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Serono. Additional information about Phase Forward is available at www.phaseforward.com.
Certain statements made in this press release that are not based on historical information are forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the performance of Phase Forward's products and services, future use of Phase Forward's products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the ability of Phase Forward to successfully integrate the operations of recently-acquired Lincoln Technologies, Inc. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Phase Forward's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the ability of Phase Forward to collaborate with regulatory agencies, discontinuation of the use of Phase Forward's products and services by regulatory agencies such as the FDA, the possibility that regulatory agencies' needs or plans may change over time, and the risk that Phase Forward may not realize the benefits of its recent acquisition of Lincoln Technologies, Inc. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Phase Forward undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by Phase Forward, see the disclosure contained in Phase Forward's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including, without limitation, its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.
- 5 Rules for Immediate Annuities
- Death in the Family: 12 Things to Do Now
- Dumbest Things You Do With Your Money
- 6 Online Networking Mistakes to Avoid
- 401(k) Mistakes to Avoid
- 5 Economic Scenarios to Keep You Up at Night
- The Real ‘Best Places to Retire’
- Best Credit Cards for You
- 12 Tough Questions to Ask Your Parents
- The Real ‘Best Colleges’
- Home Buyer Tax Credit: How to Cash In
- Why You Shouldn’t Bash Cash
- 8 Phony 'Bargains' and Better Alternatives
- Danger: 3 Debit Card Scams to Avoid
- 6 Myths About Gas Mileage
- 29 Fees We Hate Most
- Quick and Easy Ways to Boost Returns
- Best Stocks to Buy Now
- Lower Your Taxes: 10 Moves to Make Now
- New Jobs: 8 Lessons from Real-Life Career Switchers
- The New Job Market: Who Wins and Who Loses?
- Health Care Reform's Public Option: Everything You Need to Know
- Volunteer Work When Unemployed: Should You Work for Free?
- Whose Recovery Is This?
- Long-Term-Care Insurance: 4 Biggest Risks to Avoid
Content provided in partnership with
Most Recent Business Articles
- Multiple criteria evaluation and optimization of transportation systems
- Multi-criteria analysis procedure for sustainable mobility evaluation in urban areas
- A two-leveled multi-objective symbiotic evolutionary algorithm for the hub and spoke location problem
- Multi-criteria analysis for evaluating the impacts of intelligent speed adaptation
- The development of Taiwan arterial traffic-adaptive signal control system and its field test: a Taiwan experience
Most Recent Business Publications
Most Popular Business Articles
- 7 tips for effective listening: productive listening does not occur naturally. It requires hard work and practice - Back To Basics - effective listening is a crucial skill for internal auditors
- FAS 109: a primer for non-accountants - Financial Accounting Standards Board's "Statement 109: Accounting for Income Taxes"
- LIFO vs. FIFO: a return to the basics
- Too Young to Rent a Car? - 25-years-old the minimum age for car renting - Brief Article
- Design a commission plan that drives sales - Sales Commissions


