Pharmaceutical Firm Streamlines Clinical Drug TrialsPharmaceutical Firm Streamlines Clinical Drug Trials

For companies in the pharmaceutical industry, the paper-intensive process of tracking experimental medications and getting approval to market them is tailor-made for Web technology. Kyowa Pharmaceutical Inc. last week began implementing hosted digital-workspace applications to facilitate the flow of information throughout clinical trials, a key capability as the company takes steps to increase its U.S. business.

Currently, Kyowa Pharmaceutical--the Princeton, N.J., arm of $3.5 billion Japanese health-care-product maker Kyowa Hakko Co. Ltd.--seeks approval in the United States for drugs developed in Japan, then markets those products through other companies, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb. But Kyowa, best known for manufacturing an oncology medication called Mutamycin, wants to retain the licenses to its own drugs. As the company moves toward those goals, Kyowa needs an efficient collaboration system that will easily accommodate its expanding head count, says Dr. Yutaka Waki, VP of global clinical development. "It will be very easy to bring people up and running on this system because it uses basic Web technology that doesn't require a lot of training," he says.

IntraLinks Inc. provides the workspace for Kyowa to store documents online so employees and partners, including institutional review boards and the labs that conduct the trials, can access data anytime and from any location, using a password they receive from the pharmaceutical company. On paper, some documents related to clinical trials can reach 250 pages and take up to three weeks to print, package, and distribute. IntraLinks will also provide an archive of records, which Kyowa can give to the Food and Drug Administration as proof that the trial process met all requirements.

Additionally, IntraLinks provides its clients with managed services that track when information on the workspace is accessed and by whom. Companies pay a monthly fee for the shared workspace, which includes help-desk support, training, setup of the user interface, and storage capacity at Intralinks hosting partner, USinternetworking Inc.

Total annual pricing generally begins in the low six figures.