BioClinica, a provider of integrated clinical research technology services, has created a new platform: the BioClinica eHealth App xChange. The exchange aims to provide healthcare payers, providers, researchers and regulators with an ecosystem of integrated mobile and cloud-based applications through its eHealth Cloud.

The App xChange is part of a major effort to partner with innovative technology companies and expand its BioClinica partner alliance program, enabling external app developers to be part of the company’s existing technology offerings. This also will help potential partners—and their apps—gain exposure for their technologies within BioClinica’s client network.

“What we are doing is promoting interoperability with an open platform that includes clinical trial innovation, which abides by regulations in a way that no one else is doing,” said Mukhtar Ahmed, BioClinica’s eClinical president. “With App xChange, research communities will be able to leverage an ecosystem of integrated mobile and cloud applications for unique patient and consumer engagement, digital medicine, biosensor and scientific analytic capabilities, thereby accelerating pre- and post-approval research while creating efficiency and quality benefits.” 

For clinical trials, the App xChange is expected to enhance the platform through innovation around data reporting, planning scenarios and in capturing source data through machine-to-machine networks. It also will enhance study management and promote risk management along with safety of data, explained Ahmed.

“In the clinical trial life cycle, no one else is doing the kinds of things we are doing, as others take a proprietary approach,” said Ahmed, adding that the first apps, to be released shortly, can pull electronic health record data from machine to machine and provide mobility access across Apple, Android and Microsoft Windows platforms.

Howard N. Reid Jr., life sciences vice president, Investor & Partner Relations at Qointa, a research and consulting firm in Groenstraat, Belgium, said, “Today’s clinical research environment requires systems to be flexible to address the fluid nature of the collection, processing and validation of clinical data for many vital and specialized life sciences organizations. Currently sponsors must, at great expense, either single source or juggle and ramp up multiple providers and systems. Often these systems do not work well together and this can lead to data validation problems, delays and cost overruns. BioClinica’s eHealth App xChange solves these problems by providing sponsors flexible scalability within its cloud environment, as well as complete clinical trial transparency.”

BioClinica hopes to improve its positioning within the healthcare landscape by offering an exchange that brings together shareholders within it.

“Our App xChange is an incubator and growth engine for niche technology providers and individual app developers,” said Andrew Masters, BioClinica Global Product Development senior vice president, in a prepared statement. 

As a specialty clinical trials services provider, BioClinica offers medical imaging services and enterprise eClinical technologies. The eHealth App xChange announcement follows a series of developments and acquisitions to expand its capabilities and grow its market share. In August, it launched the BioClinica eHealth Cloud, a configurable platform offering that extends the company’s scope of traditional clinical trial technology with unlimited accessibility and options to better meet current and future needs of both preapproval and post-approval research. In July, BioClinica acquired MediciGlobal, a global patient recruitment and retention firm. Together, they will offer biopharmaceutical companies patient recruitment and retention services.

Last year, BioClinica purchased Blueprint Clinical, whose Compass program evaluates the potential risks of patient safety and clinical trial operational performance.

The proprietary data-driven decision engine with cloud-based risk assessment reporting capabilities was added to BioClinica’s eClinical platform and enables clients to use data and analytics to better understand the risks associated with remote-based monitoring.

“We’re looking to harness a lot of creativity by bringing ideas together,” said Ahmed.

Email comments to Ronald at ronald.rosenberg@centerwatch.com. Follow @RonRCW

This article was reprinted from Volume 19, Issue 36, of CWWeekly, a leading clinical research industry newsletter providing expanded analysis on breaking news, study leads, trial results and more. Subscribe »