By Allison Proffitt 

 

May 1, 2013 | Comprehend Systems is launching the online signup of Comprehend Clinical. By signing up online and connecting Comprehend to their existing data or EDC system through the cloud, executives, data managers, study managers, clinical operations, monitors and others can start analyzing a single study with Comprehend almost immediately.

 

When eCliniqua spoke with Comprehend almost a year ago, CEO Rick Morrison was coming off of two years of market research. Morrison had been a lead developer, writing software for FDA and big pharma for years, and he knew the challenges with data visualization. “I saw a problem that wasn’t being met, seeing same issues over and over again,” he told eCliniqua. 

 

“[Sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs)] have invested heavily in data collection,” Morrison said. “But they’ve not extracted that value.” 

 

An array of EDC, CTMS, and other electronic data collection systems all promise to help trials run cheaper and more efficiently. Still sponsors and CROs have been forced to piece together mishmashes of clunky and expensive data warehouses, ETL tools, BI tools, teams of programmers, and more, often to no avail, the company says. 

 

These systems are extremely expensive, time-consuming to build, and do not deliver the promised real-time insights quickly enough to make critical decisions.

 

Comprehend Clinical was formed in 2010 to take on these problems. The team, “spent all 2010 listening, validating our ideas,” Morrison said. “We knew that there was a problem and saw that there was a problem. We listened and built something that fit their needs… In 2011 we started hiring, raised investments, and we built the product.” 

 

Comprehend Clinical launched in the summer of 2012 and made an impression at DIA. Then, Morrison explained that the product equips clinical trial stakeholders to quickly see study progress and resolve bottlenecks. Comprehend Clinical allows users to create customized interactive dashboards that extend across all of the systems that house data. 

 

The dashboards enable ad hoc reporting of real time analytics using simple drag and drop methods. For example, charts can be created by selecting what should be on the X- and Y- axes, and then dragging and dropping that information. With these analytics, the user can see a graphical representation of information and then drill down to a patient’s profile or the number of adverse events across specific study populations. No programming or IT investment is required, Morrison explained. 

 

Today, the product is available online. Users register and provide connection details to an existing EDC or other data systems through the cloud. Any sponsor using Medidata Rave, SCDM datasets, Medrio, Oracle Clinical, Oracle Inform and other systems can register for Comprehend Clinical on the site. They can then download and sign an NDA and start viewing their clinical data. 

 

“We work well with anything that’s out there,” Morrison said. “We’ve targeted specific solutions—Mediata Rave, Oracle Clinical… We also have a lot of tools and infrastructure in place so we can create an adaptor extremely quickly, a couple of days.”

 

To work with a single study and two users, Comprehend Clinical expects to be fully set up in less than five days and charges a $1,250/month fee. There are no long upfront contracts, sponsors can start on a month-by-month basis. Groups can also easily scale up to use additional features of Comprehend, including full cross-trial and cross-system, or support for other commercial or proprietary data systems.

 

“Comprehend Clinical… deliver[s] on the promise of true clinical data insights through the cloud,” said Morrison. “Available in days, Comprehend Clinical removes the need to wait on programmers, large procurement cycles, or slow integration processes.”

 

Comprehend’s goal is to try to make clinical data analysis and their system very easy to use for all involved, Morrison said. “I’m confident that the next 5 years is going to be extremely exciting.”