BIG DATA

Constella Group, Inc., the leader in providing evidence-based health intelligence, and SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced today that the two companies will provide an integrated offering that allows life sciences companies to merge the day-to-day planning and execution of clinical trials with powerful data integration and analysis. The joint offering -- Constella Orion Powered by SAS Drug Development -- works through an ASP platform to provide U.S.-based customers with direct visibility into the total clinical project through a single, intuitive interface. The joint offering, available now and debuting at the 40th annual Drug Information Association (DIA) conference in Washington, D.C., provides companies with the ability to actively monitor the progress of clinical trials and proactively take action to address problems -- such as delays in overall patient enrollment -- instead of learning about these issues at a later date from a paper report issued at a pre-determined milestone. Licensed on a per-trial basis to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device firms engaging in Phase II through Phase IV clinical trials, the SAS and Constella offering provides a cost-effective approach to implementing and managing new technologies. At the same time, customers can analyze the collected clinical trials data for regulatory submission and explore their research for new market opportunities, product line extensions and safety issues, all within a controlled and secure collaborative framework designed for life sciences research industries. "Together with SAS, we are creating a seamless, end-to-end drug development platform unlike any other on the market," said Donald A. Holzworth, Constella CEO. "This highly affordable platform is designed to increase R&D efficiency, improve collaboration and information exchange among study teams and sponsors, and accelerate time to market with excellent regulatory support and direction." While electronic clinical technologies are critical to the long-term development strategies of life sciences companies, many cannot afford to invest heavily in such technology. In addition, these technologies traditionally have been highly fragmented, functionally limited and not clearly supportive of government regulations such as 21 CFR Part 11 and the Prescription Drug Users Fee Act. "With the integration of SAS Drug Development and Constella Orion, customers will not only manage, but truly collaborate around life sciences research programs through a secure, Web-based environment that provides the regulatory support that is required," said Kecia Serwin, general manager of SAS' Health and Life Sciences group. "All authorized users will have real-time access to research data, allowing them to drill down, extract and analyze study data, without the aid of a programmer and without having to change their work environments. This way, customers can readily obtain critical intelligence to make fast and well-informed go/no-go decisions throughout the development process."