Now that Newtown, Pa.-based contract research organization Bio-Imaging Technologies has completed its integration of Phoenix Data Systems, which it acquired in March 2008, the company has changed its name to BioClinica. The new name also marks the start of an active acquisition phase for the 450-employee company, which plans to acquire more companies in the clinical research services space.

“We started this whole re-branding about four months ago. This is a situation that is not going to be a yearly event. We’re going to do this once,” said Mark Weinstein, president and CEO, BioClinica. The name change was announced at IIR's 18th Annual Partnerships with CROs conference in Orlando.

He explained that the name “Bio-Imaging Technologies” did not make it obvious to investors that they had an eClinical component. “Plus, we’re looking at a lot of other acquisitions, and how do we come up with an umbrella brand, a super brand, if you will, that we can really start to leverage the power of 450 people?”

BioClinica offers medical image management and electronic data capture. In addition, the company offers solutions that combine these core services.

“Between what we are doing with Phoenix, now the BioClinica eClinical division, as well as future acquisitions we’re looking at, our mantra, or our goal, is to say, ‘Everything needs to go into a single database such that you do not have to clean up at the end.’ You can save a tremendous amount of time and money when you combine those data sets earlier,” Weinstein said

“If you look across the space, nobody’s done a great job at that. A lot of people talk about being interfaced and synchronized, but ‘interfaced’ and synchronized’ means that you’re exporting from one system, importing to another and every time you have that mechanism, you will have information that doesn’t match.”

BioClinica’s roots go back to 1990, and the original company went public two years later. The company has grown organically and through acquisition, its first one being Netherlands-based Heart Core in 2004, then France-based Theralys in February 2007, followed by Phoenix Data Systems.

The company plans on making more acquisitions, despite the global economic downturn.

“Some acquisitions will give us more critical mass in our core, and some might be around things such as patient-reported outcomes and other things like that. It’s a very interesting time in the marketplace. A lot of people would say it’s not a great time. I can’t tell you that I’m happy that my stock price has come down with everybody else’s, but I will tell you that having $15 million in the bank, being a public company, not having any debt, being profitable and growing puts us in a very interesting position because there are a number of good companies out there in a different stage of their life cycle where the storyboard that they laid out two years ago is no longer feasible,” Weinstein said.

The company’s revenue guidance range for 2009 is $60 million to $63 million, compared with last year’s service revenue of about $56 million.

“We ratcheted down our guidance in November last year, and I feel good that we were pretty accurate as far as what happened since then, We do see things building up now, which is pretty positive for us. We think we’ll be a real great setup for 2010,” Weinstein said.