December 2004 – The CenterWatch Monthly : Volume 11, Issue 12, December 2003

Few Left in Online Patient Matchmaker Market

Four companies are still pairing patients with trials online. All of them claim to have recently passed the break-even stage. They are actively building new relationships – Acurian with retail pharmacies, EmergingMed with cancer centers, and NCERx with an assortment of web communities. And Veritas Medicine is building more disease-specific recruitment web sites. Given continuing privacy concerns, all players have put a premium on building consumer trust. Recruitment matchmakers are seeking new and better ways to identify patients and guide them toward the screening process. The more sophisticated, targeted approaches of today are generating more enrolled patients than web efforts of the past and more attention from the traditional media world.

Hidden Opportunities in the Medical Device Market

CROs specializing in services for medical device manufacturers report a strong market in device trials, despite a lackluster number of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pre-market approval applications for novel medical devices. The number of pilot and feasibility studies done in advance of pre-market approval applications, a trend toward complex studies requiring more data and longer patient follow-up, and a new push from the FDA for post-market studies is fueling the market for medical device trials.

Parallel Trade: All Quiet on the Eastern European Front?

Enlargement of the European Union was thought to have the potential for opening the floodgates to parallel trade. But all seems quiet now.

Eye On: Migraine

Migraine affects more than 28 million Americans. CenterWatch has identified a pipeline of 14 drugs in development for migraine.

• Month in Review
• In the Pipeline
• Opportunities Underway
• TrialWatch