inVentiv Health Partner Mytrus Inc. Wins Prestigious Award For Its Pioneering Technology In Electronic Informed Consent

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- inVentiv Health, offering best-in-class clinical, commercial and consulting services to the biopharmaceutical industry, announced today that partner company Mytrus Inc. won Frost & Sullivan's prestigious Product Leadership Award for pioneering electronic informed consent for clinical trials.

Informed consent is one of the most important, but neglected, elements of enrolling patients in clinical trials and Mytrus technology is transforming the process.

Frost & Sullivan, a respected global research organization that tracks more than 250,000 companies, compared Mytrus to key competitors in a rigorous review and named Mytrus winner of the North American Product Leadership Award in Clinical Trials.

"Mytrus has developed a simple, yet effective and elegant product that is completely changing the way clinical trials are enrolled and consented," Frost & Sullivan concluded in their final report.  "Electronic informed consents are easy and save time for both the sponsors and participants" in clinical trials.

According to ClinicalTrials.gov, there were more than 60,000 registered clinical trials ongoing in the United States last June.  Studies are often long and complex.  The time and effort spent recruiting patients can represent a third of the cost of trials, yet once enrolled in a trial, patients often drop out due to poor understanding of the treatment protocol. All of this contributes, in the end, to higher drug development costs.

Earlier this year, inVentiv Health took an equity position in Mytrus, as part of a suite of services and technologies inVentiv has assembled to dramatically improve trial efficiency. Shortly afterward, the company launched inVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions (iCTRS) to help trial sponsors accelerate recruitment, improve site productivity and reduce study timelines.

iCTRS merges inVentiv's vast proprietary database, communications expertise rooted in behavioral research and innovative digital technologies and social media to aid clinical trial sponsors under pressure to speed drug development.  Mytrus' technology and methodology revolutionizes the study start-up phase by expediting and improving enrollment.

"Mytrus has developed a product that makes the cumbersome, but critical process of informed consent simple and efficient for participants and offers sponsors and regulators new opportunities to collect and track important informed consent data analytics," Frost & Sullivan wrote.

Informed consent typically contains 8 to 50 pages of often-complex information. Participants frequently fail to read or understand the documents before they consent to participating in a trial. Further, there are no requirements for assessing participants' understanding of the protocol or risks. 

A study published earlier this year in the Public Library of Science showed that patients and investigators receiving information electronically via Mytrus on iPads had far greater comprehension and retention of the material than those receiving the same information on paper.

"We are humbled to receive this award for our work in the area of eConsent and we are encouraged to see the number of companies rushing to adopt more patient-centered tools for clinical research," Mytrus CEO Anthony Costello said. 

Mytrus will accept its award at a gala dinner sponsored by Frost & Sullivan in San Jose, CA. on September 9^th.

About inVentiv Health Clinical
inVentiv Health Clinical, formerly PharmaNet/i3, is a leading provider of global drug development services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, generic drug, and medical device companies, offering therapeutically specialized capabilities for Phase I-IV clinical development, bioanalytical services, and strategic resourcing from a single clinical professional to an entire functional team. With 7,000 passionate employees in more than 36 countries, inVentiv Health Clinical works to accelerate high quality drug development programs of all sizes around the world. http://www.inVentivHealthClinical.com.

About Mytrus
Founded in 2009, Mytrus is a California-based clinical technology and services company built on the idea that modern technologies can enable people to safely and effectively participate in clinical trials without requiring them to live near a study center. The company's proprietary methods can dramatically improve patient recruitment timelines, increase patient retention and reduce overall study costs for sponsors. Learn more about Mytrus at www.mytrus.com or find the company on Facebook and Twitter @mytrus.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

• The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.
• The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

About inVentiv Health
inVentiv Health, Inc. is a leading global provider of best-in-class clinical, commercial and consulting services to companies seeking to accelerate performance. inVentiv offers convergent services that deliver extraordinary outcomes to clients whose goal is improving human life. In 40 countries around the world, inVentiv's 12,000 employees help clients rapidly transform promising ideas into commercial reality. inVentiv clients include more than 550 pharmaceutical, biotech and life sciences companies, as well as companies that now see health as part of their mission. inVentiv Health, Inc. is privately owned by inVentiv Group Holdings, Inc., an organization sponsored by affiliates of Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P., Liberty Lane Partners and members of the inVentiv management team. For more information, visit http://www.inVentivHealth.com.   

SOURCE inVentiv Health, Inc.