Phase Forward acquisition catapults Oracle to big league

By Allan Tan | Jun 28, 2010

Thumbnail: 

In April 2010, Oracle signed an agreement to acquire Phase Forward, a provider of e-clinical and drug safety solutions. Almost a year earlier, Oracle purchased Relsys, a provider of drug safety, risk management and analytics. Prior to these acquisitions, Oracle’s life sciences business was mostly around project management, validation and compliance.

According to Ovum analyst for Pharmaceutical Technology, Ruchi Mallya, Oracle is gearing up to offer an end-to-end e-clinical and drug safety product suite.

“This merger will significantly bolster Oracle’s Health Sciences Suite with tools that will enable providers, regulators, and patients to more effectively and securely capture, contribute, access, and share data,” said Mallya.

Mallya believes that the acquisitions of Relsys and Phase Forward give Oracle substantial muscle in the Pharma lifecycle. Ovum believes this is just the tip of the iceberg, with much more to come from Oracle as it continues to invest in its Health Sciences Suites.

Frost principal consultant, Dr. Pawel Suwinski believes that Phase Forward represents a continuation of Oracle’s accelerated growth within the data management sector. He observed that Oracle’s Healthcare strategy appears to clearly avoid the overcrowded Hospital Information Systems (HIS) segment opting for the relatively low key and niche area - the Clinical Data Management Applications for managing clinical trials information.

“It’s a very clever move as it opens the door for servicing the richest players in the healthcare value chain, which are the big pharmaceutical companies. Also, since this HIT space is relatively less populated with suppliers, Oracle will have no problem in creating barriers to entry by establishing itself as the preferred Clinical Data Management provider – obtaining full supremacy,” Dr. Suwinski concludes.

In the end, the goal for Oracle, and arguably every major ICT vendor in the healthcare sector, is making available solutions that enable the delivery of personalized medicine and value-based health care.