Medidata Introduces New Payment Technology

Medidata Payments Eliminates Key Pain Point in Burdensome Clinical Trial Site Reimbursement Process

Market’s First End-to-End Cloud-Based Reimbursement Tool Uses Clinical Trial Data to Calculate Costs and Disburse Payment to Investigative Sites in Real Time

  NEW YORK, N.Y. –

Medidata

, the leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for clinical research in life sciences, today announced the launch of

Medidata Payments

. A new component of the industry-leading Medidata Clinical Cloud®, Medidata Payments enables clinical trial sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) to calculate reimbursements to investigative sites in real time and automatically disburse payments, eliminating a key operational pain point in the drug development process.   “The life sciences industry has come a long way in terms of digitizing the clinical trials process, yet the basic ability to pay clinical research sites correctly and on time has remained a struggle,” said Alan Louie, research director of life science R&D strategy and technology at International Data Corporation (IDC). “Medidata's continuing innovation in this area is helping to drive industry progress towards delivering a more comprehensive approach to executing clinical trials, enabling researchers to focus more of their time on other, more pressing needs, including improving patient enrollment and finding faster, more efficient ways to bring new drugs to market."     Payment for clinical trial work is often plagued by slow reimbursement, calculation errors and inaccurate payments, putting financial strain on investigative sites that are already facing rising operational costs. According to an ongoing research project conducted by the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), lengthy delays in payment result in high turnover rates among clinical investigators, with 40 percent of sites dropping out of FDA-regulated clinical trials. This high turnover rate drives up the cost of drug development, with onboarding rates averaging $40,000 per new site.   Medidata Payments can help fix this problem. Introduced in 2009 as a module within the Medidata Clinical Cloud, Medidata Payments has evolved into a large-scale, stand-alone solution that identifies and calculates withholding tax, captures indirect tax and performs global disbursement. With its seamless integration with Medidata’s cloud-based electronic data capture (EDC) and management system (Medidata Rave®), Medidata Payments enables quick study setup, better cash flow management and flexible, precise calculation trigger options such as generating costs at the procedure-level. Medidata Payments has robust payment calculation capabilities including pre-payments, holdbacks, split payments among different payees, payments in multiple currencies and accruals, and more.   “Our long-term relationship with Medidata and use of their unified cloud technology platform helps to keep us at the forefront of operational excellence, streamlining trial processes and providing customers with the data and insights they need to accomplish their clinical development goals,” said Alistair Macdonald, president and chief operating officer, INC Research. "Medidata’s comprehensive payments solution is an exciting addition to their platform. Its ability to seamlessly manage complex contract requirements, generate costs powered by our own trial data, and disburse payments across hundreds of studies worldwide will further our efforts in meeting study timelines and keeping trial sites productive and engaged.”   Mike Capone, Medidata’s chief operating officer, added: “Medidata’s cloud-based payment technology is not only allowing for faster and more accurate site payments around the globe, it’s adding an entirely new dimension to the current trial landscape and fostering stronger partnerships between sponsors, contract research organizations and clinical research sites. It’s a powerful new tool for sponsors and their outsourcing partners who conduct trials in more than 160 countries around the world, using more than 125 different currencies.”