ClinPhone's Medication Management Solution Overcomes the Major Challenges Facing Supply Chain Management

(June 15, 2005) In a recent poll conducted by ClinPhone, the global leader in clinical technology solutions, over half of the participants indicated that managing the logistics of large, multi-national studies is the biggest challenge facing the supply chain management of clinical trial materials. The opinion poll was conducted as part of ClinPhone's recent webinar series, "Demystifying the Black Box: Automated Medication Supply Chain Management." A further 24% of poll respondents felt that accurately forecasting the amount of drug supplies needed is another major challenge of supply chain management.

The webinar series, attended by over 300 biopharmaceutical employees from mainly clinical development and clinical supplies departments, cited how ClinPhone's industry-leading Medication Supply Management solutions can help to overcome these challenges. The benefits include automated site and depot medication inventory control, pooling medication supplies across protocols and managing supplies with limited overage. This greatly simplifies the logistics of managing large, multinational clinical trials.

In addition, ClinPhone's supply management consultancy enables sponsors to accurately forecast drug supply requirements. ClinPhone uses a proprietary solution, MedSimTM, which is a strategic decision tool that allows sponsors to compare supply strategy options, assess risks and calculate supply quantities. MedSim uses sophisticated simulation modelling techniques to provide accurate and reliable forecasts and predictions. Real world unpredictability, such as the logistical issues of multi-national trials, is included in the simulations to determine the range of possible outcomes and provide an accurate confidence interval for model forecasts. Included in the forty-some input parameters in the MedSim model are variables such as locations of central and local depots, time required to ship to each of these depots, time required to ship to each of the sites and the expected recruitment rates for each region.

With the current drive to get drugs to market faster, sponsor companies are continually evaluating how they run clinical trials to introduce more efficiencies. In relation to clinical trial material, this often means starting studies with more limited supplies, and managing more sophisticated multinational supply chains with increasingly complicated logistics. This makes ClinPhone's medication management and supply chain forecasting services a valuable contribution to accelerating clinical research.

Patrick Hughes, Strategic Business Development and Marketing Director at ClinPhone, comments: "With in-depth understanding of challenges faced by the clinical trial industry, ClinPhone offers cutting-edge technology solutions and services that help clients solve critical business issues. By identifying the challenges facing the clinical trials industry through webinars and opinion polls, we can ensure that the products we bring to market directly address our customers' needs, enhancing and ultimately accelerating the entire clinical process."

For further information on ClinPhone's clinical trial management solutions, please visit www.clinphone.com, or alternatively email info@clinphone.com

About ClinPhone

ClinPhone Group Ltd is a specialist Clinical Technology Organization (CTO) working with the leading global biotech and pharmaceutical organizations. With its corporate headquarters in Nottingham, UK, ClinPhone is the largest and most accomplished CTO with experience in over 1300 clinical trials spanning 88 countries and 71 languages.The company's solutions enable its clients to manage their clinical trials more effectively through the use of technology. Building on its telephone and web-based randomization and medication management expertise, ClinPhone can offer a wide range of innovative products covering all aspects of a clinical trial, including Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO), Interactive Voice and Web Response (IVR and IWR), Patient Recruitment Solutions, and Clinical Trial Management Software (CTMS).