The New York, N.Y.-based eClinical company Medidata Solutions has been awarded a major contract from AstraZeneca to provide the company with its Medidata Rave electronic data capture (EDC), replacing AstraZeneca’s present in-house system.

AstraZeneca initially will incorporate Medi-data’s platform on 50 to 55 phase II through IV global studies; however, its ultimate goal is to use Rave on all studies within the next several years.

“I think we are seeing a trend, where companies who had internal systems, like AstraZeneca, are making decisions to go with a product that is off the shelf. The other side of the equation for a company such as AstraZeneca, is what is the overhead of trying to maintain an internally developed product,” Ed Ikeguchi, co-founder and chief medical officer at Medidata told CWWeekly. You can read CenterWatch complete in depth coverage of the deal in the December 4th issue of CWWeekly.

You can read the company press release here.