To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
Good Products Ltd
Headquarters
Nottingham, UK
Location(s)
Nottingham, UK and Irvine, Calif.
Years in Drug Research
20 Years
Spokesperson
Patrick Hughes, Senior Vice President
Web site
About the company
Good Products recognizes that one of the biggest challenges facing biopharmaceutical professionals is easy access to accurate and timely information which makes their hectic working more efficient. Whether you are a VP of Quality Assurance who needs to control and disseminate a vast array of published SOPs or a Clinical Project Manager who is trying to consolidate multiple suggested protocol amendments into a single, signed version, Good Products has a solution for you. At the product core is a Document Management Software product called g-docs™ which has pre-configured SOP, CAPA and Validation modules and integrated digital signatures and training applications. As it is built on a Microsoft SharePoint platform the document management solution is cost effective and flexible enough to be configured for your specific needs, plus it is extremely intuitive for you to pick up and use from day one.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
Good Products came into being in November 2006 and but was founded as a result of its principals having worked for over 20 years in regulatory consulting within the industry. During this time much of their time was spent validating monolithic enterprise-wide systems that took an enormous amount of resource, time and most of all cost to implement. Following internal launch after spending millions of dollars over months if not years to get the product absolutely right for the organization and requiring a cast of hundreds to install and then train users, these huge, complex systems were often found to unused and very quickly become redundant. Much of the rich content and innumerable features had the result of making these ‘solutions’ unusable and consequently staff would only use a fraction of the functionality if work with the product at all. During the last decade the industry has insisted that technology drives internal inefficiencies in their business and this, coupled with historic experiences, made the founders of Good Products focus their attention on providing a product that users would be delighted with in making their working lives easier and at a fraction of the cost and implementation effort.
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
During the next decade pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies are going to be even more insistent on sticking to what they do best which is developing new drugs or medical elements. Supporting technology and services which isn’t instrumental to their core business will be outsourced to companies who can perform these tasks or develop solutions far more efficiently then the sponsor could ever hope to do. There will be a focus on reducing timelines across all aspects of drug development which will ensure that clinical protocols will feature initiatives such as adaptive statistical techniques as well as supporting technologies to help manage and support trials better than ever before.
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
Clinical technologies have begun to play a key part in clinical development and they have changed the way that trials are managed and supported. These technologies fall into two distinct areas; those solutions that collect and manage clinical data directly and other software and software as a service that help support and manage the process of managing the trial. Consequently any software that ultimately helps to drive down costs by enabling greater efficiency and accelerating the time to data capture and database lock has seen above average growth compared to comparable ancillary services such as those provided by Contract Research Organizations (CROs). The largest growth has therefore come from Electronic Data Capture (EDC), Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO), safety products and clinical data management systems in the category of data acquisition. In terms of trial management and electronic submission products on the up are Document Management, eSubmission and Clinical Trial Management Software.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
The industry has seen modest amounts of technology company consolidation during the last three years but this is set to accelerate during the next five to 10 years. My hypothesis is that three or four technology providers will ultimately prevail and will provide a one-stop-shop for all a sponsor’s clinical technology requirements. In the same way that contract research organizations provide turn-key clinical development services for their clients, the leading clinical technology organizations will have a portfolio of software and services which will enable to assist in everything from protocol development, acquisition of clinical and patient self-report data, management of the sites, communication with patients, analysis of results, management of all documentation and finally electronic submission to the regulators.
