By Allison Proffitt 

November 16, 2016 | DrugDev announced today the formal acquisition of SecureConsent, an e-consent solution deployed on tablets and other mobile devices (including BYOD) to optimize site and patient convenience with which DrugDev has been working closely.

SecureConsent and DrugDev have a longstanding relationship. In early 2014, at its annual advisory board meeting, DrugDev asked advisors to flag growing needs. “e-Consent was at the top of the list to say, ‘This is something that we see as a trend in the future. We see huge value in it… We know that we want to make sure that we’re offering eConsent as part of our program, and we’d like to offer something integrated so it’s not another standalone [tool],’” Brett Kleger, Chief Commercial Officer, DrugDev, told Clinical Informatics News.

One of the DrugDev advisory board recommended SecureConsent, then its own division of Consent Solutions. Since 2003 the company had been working closely with patients, IRBs, CROs, sponsors, hospital systems, academic institutions and regulatory authorities to deliver the best e-consent process possible. Kleger invited the company into the DrugDev Innovation Lab and has been working closely with SecureConsent co-founder Eric Delente for the past nine months.

“I think this sort of extended relationship has helped us align and understand our mutual strategies, which I think are really centered around being able to do more trials, and making the whole trial experience… easier and better for everyone involved,” said Delente.

The e-consent team will continue to operate out of its headquarters in the Washington D.C. area, and Delente assumes leadership and growth of DrugDev’s entire portfolio of patient solutions, which also include feasibility and engagement capabilities. Financial details were not disclosed.

Making It Official

DrugDev’s unified clinical operations suite enables leading sponsors and CROs to transform how global trials are run using innovative technology; adding e-consent was a logical next step. In fact, Kleger told Clinical Informatics News, it heralds a move for DrugDev toward patient solutions.

“DrugDev has always been about… how do you make the life of the investigator easier?” he said. In the past years, DrugDev has made a string of acquisitions in service of this goal. The company acquired CFS Clinical in 2013 to help ease investigator payments. In 2014 DrugDev bought TrialNetworks, and acquired the company’s cloud-based clinical trial optimization platform.  Earlier this year, DrugDev and Exostar partnered to combine Exostar’s identity credential with the DrugDev Golden Number.

But now DrugDev wants to move their solutions toward patients. “Eric’s going to be the president of our patient solutions unit,” Kleger said. “In the past several years, we kept saying, how do you help investigators in their interactions with patients… [This] is really the entre of DrugDev into the patient space.”

Kleger mentions other solutions maturing in the Innovation Lab: mobile patient communication, reminders, and document exchange between sites and patients.

“The lens is always, ‘How do you help the investigator run the study more efficiently,’” Kleger emphasized. “While previously it was [focused] on investigator interactions with sponsors and CROs, now we’re actually helping them with their interaction with patients.”