|
By Mel Duvall
Oracle made a big push into the health sciences market Friday after it announced a deal to acquire Phase Forward for $685 million.
Phase Forward, which is based in Waltham, Mass., develops software that is used by major drug manufacturers and regulatory agencies to manage clinical trials and drug safety. Its software is used by more than 300 companies and agencies, including such firms as AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Procter & Gamble.
Bob Weiler, chairman and CEO of Phase Forward, said the company had agreed to be acquired by Oracle for $17 per share in cash, which represents a valuation of about $685 million. In a statement Weiler said becoming part of Oracle's Health Sciences Global Business Unit would provide the company with greater access to a larger market.
"Phase Forward's software has been used successfully by hundreds of customers to accelerate innovation in drug development and patient care delivery," he said, noting that the company's software has been used in more than 10,000 clinical trials. "We look forward to combining our wealth of experience with Oracle Health Sciences."
Analysts say the deal has two key advantages for Oracle: It provides the company with a wedge that it can use to dislodge rival SAP's hold on the health sciences market. Secondly, Phase Forward has been a leader in providing its offerings in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) format -- an area in which Oracle has been seen as lagging.
The acquisition marks the end of just over a decade of growth for Phase Forward. The company was founded in 1997 by Paul Bleicher, a doctor and researcher who had been running clinical drug trials since the early 1990s. In so doing, he realized how flawed existing paper-based systems were at managing the information flow in trials and began thinking about how an Internet-based system might be able to improve the process.
Bleicher founded and moderated a clinical trials email list, which served as an early discussion forum on the topic. Those discussions formed the basis of the eventual launch of the company and its first product, an electronic data capture application called InForm.
Phase Forward became publicly traded in 2004 and went on to acquire a number of other emerging companies in the clinical trial arena, including Lincoln Technologies, Clarix and Maaguzi. It closed 2009 with $213 million in revenue, up 19 percent from the $170 million in revenue it garnered in 2008.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
