Datatrak International Inc, the leading and most experienced Application Service Provider (ASP) in the Electronic Data Capture (EDC) industry has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Oriam, SA, a French Technology Firm with offices in Paris, France and Boston, Massachusetts. Closing of the proposed transaction is contingent upon appropriate financing. Specific terms involved with this upcoming financing are currently being evaluated by Datatrak International and its investment advisors.

Oriam, with annualized revenues approximating $3.1 million has a profitable operational history and has been a leading technology provider in the clinical trials industry since its founding in 1989. Oriam is only one of three independent providers to the global pharmaceutical industry of Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMS) and adverse event (e.g., safety) reporting software. Oriam''s customer base currently includes 33 clients, predominantly European-based pharmaceutical companies, although expansion into the American markets was recently evident with the adoption of Oriam''s software suite by a prominent biotechnology firm and a major U.S. academic medical center. Several of Oriam''s key customers have utilized its technology for many years and have progressively expanded their user base to more than 500 per company. Oriam currently sells its products via a traditional licensing business model.

"Datatrak has a very focused vision for growth known as the Continuum Strategy", noted Dr. Jeffrey A. Green President & Chief Executive Officer of Datatrak International Inc. "This Strategy is based on management''s conviction that the breadth of technology applications used in clinical trials should be integrated and follow a continuous (Continuum), compatible, and progressive flow of information from functionality to functionality. However, in today''s environment for clinical trials such integration is presently absent. At this time, there only exist ''point solutions'' throughout this industry offered by a variety of different companies with completely disjointed data models -- none of which inherently or easily communicate with each other. Currently, the workflow required to utilize all CTMS and safety systems requires manual reconciliation from paper into technology systems. In order to achieve significant returns on investment from technology applications in clinical trials, customers must often contract with multiple firms and are forced to pay for repetitive and time-consuming integration bridges that are by definition; limited in their reusability. Such implementation requirements only compound the data problems in this industry as they represent no realistic long-term solution. Moreover, this challenging, risky, and expensive task of ''project-by-project'' integration further delays technology adoption rates within the biopharmaceutical industry and often relegates ''e-clinical'' goals to a largely conceptual status."

Datatrak''s acquisition of Oriam makes significant strides towards the building of an efficient Integration model for the clinical trial environment of the future and will therefore remove many of the reasons for slow adoption rates. Manual "key-punching" of data from paper into CTMS or safety systems (and related costs and delays) will no longer be required. By definition, continuous linkages for virtually instantaneous data transfers from application to application will exist under the Datatrak/Oriam business model. Repetitive integration steps in a project-by-project manner will become an exercise of the past. Among global technology providers, Datatrak International is poised to stand alone in the progressive fulfillment of the e-clinical vision.

"An excellent analogy might describe Datatrak''s Continuum Strategy as one that seeks to assemble a ''Microsoft Office'' product suite for clinical trials," continued Green. "A variety of functionalities will exist under a singly integrated data environment, and customers may select one or several of these software applications for use in specific clinical trials."

With the recent announcement on its development of the DataUnifyer technology, Datatrak International now has a dual strategy for assisting its clients in the fulfillment of their e-clinical goals. One strategy involves the progressive Integration of key components required in any e-clinical implementation, as represented by this acquisition of Oriam. Additional segments of the Continuum are being targeted for corporate integration over the next year. The second approach of Datatrak to fulfill e-clinical goals is through the universal capability of the DataUnifyer allowing for the unification of information from disparate data sources and placing that information collectively into architecture for mining. The warehousing option combined with the ability to easily search and utilize information across databases from entirely different applications is a great desire in this industry. These capabilities of integration and unification do not currently exist in this industry today.

"Oriam''s software products have always been designed in close collaboration with our customers in Europe and, more recently, in the US", stated Jacques Rudelle, Sales Manager for Oriam, SA. "The experience we have acquired since 1989 has led us in the direction of a global IT approach for clinical research. Our systems reduce the time and the costs involved in projects and clinical trials by standardizing data and facilitating the implementation and integration of our software to better adapt it to company processes. Datatrak shares this vision. Our collaboration will help us meet the demands of our market more efficiently, because pooling our respective skills and geographic reaches will give our products the perfect complementary fit needed to enlarge our scope of distribution."

"This acquisition represents an important step towards the implementation of our Continuum Strategy which is intended to provide a multifunctional and integrated e-clinical technology offering to the global biopharmaceutical industry", continued Green.