IMS Health, the leading provider of information, services and technology for the healthcare industry around the world, has acquired benchmarking solutions and analytics company, TTC, that helps life sciences organizations around the world plan for and negotiate the costs of clinical trials. TTC offers clients a robust set of clinical trial cost benchmarks, budgeting and negotiation tools to enhance the speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their trial planning and management activities.
IMS will integrate its evidence-based, anonymized patient and treatment outcomes insights with TTC’s comprehensive cost data drawn from organizations that conduct nearly 80 per cent of all commercial clinical studies. TTC maintains GrantPlan, the world’s largest clinical grant benchmarking and negotiation database, and serves 17 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and eight of the ten largest Contract Research Organizations. This follows IMS’s April 2012 acquisition of DecisionView, a technology innovator that delivers clinical trial planning and performance solutions. The combination will enable pharma R&D teams to significantly improve the productivity of their clinical trials through unprecedented access to advanced analytics and decision-support tools.
“This acquisition marks an important step in further expanding IMS’s capabilities in the pharma R&D space,” says Andrew Kress, senior vice president, Healthcare Value Solutions, IMS. “The combination of TTC’s portfolio and IMS information assets will fuel ongoing innovation, enabling clients to base vital budgeting and negotiation decisions on real-world data and benchmarks.”
Adds Linda Drumright, general manager, Clinical Trial Optimization Solutions, IMS, “There is growing demand for more data and analytics to optimize the clinical trial process. Together, we can deliver an end-to-end view of trial planning and execution – increasingly critical at a time when the industry faces significant challenges and requires new approaches.”
TTC’s benchmark data and budgeting/negotiation services will be available through IMS’s Clinical Trial Optimization unit, part of the company’s Healthcare Value Solutions business. IMS Healthcare Value Solutions connects healthcare stakeholders through real-world evidence to demonstrate the value of medicines, enhance quality and drive improved results. The TTC offerings complement IMS solutions currently provided to clients in the areas of protocol feasibility, country allocation, site selection, and enrollment planning and forecasting.
Drug developers face a number of challenges in keeping costs and development timelines on track. Through TTC’s analytical tools, clients gain access to the most timely, objective and reliable global cost benchmarks to ensure fair market value, accurate budgeting and streamlined communications with CROs and the clinical investigators who oversee trials.
“We’re extremely pleased to join the IMS team,” says Harold Glass, PhD, TTC president and CEO. “Our clients are actively seeking more data and analytics to guide their decision making and drive improvements in a process that today is highly inefficient. This combination makes IMS a leading partner for healthcare organizations in the planning and execution of clinical trials built on an evidence-based foundation.”