Jon Scheiber, Venture Wire

DecisionView, a San Francisco-based start-up, has emerged from stealth with software aimed at helping life science firms cut costs associated with inefficiencies in clinical trials management.

Standards for clinical trials call for the recruitment of test subjects along a range of criteria including ethnicity, age, location and health, according to DecisionView COO and CFO Tony Meneghetti. A single study at a large company may cost as much as $8,000-$10,000 per subject, he added.

“At one pharmaceutical company we're talking to, they believe that for just the recruitment of patients for a trial, it's a $30 million to $40 million problem for them [annually] just in the recruitment phase,” said Meneghetti.

The DecisionView software provides a way for clinical trials managers to get a better understanding of the trials process, with an eye towards reducing inefficiencies. “It integrates information that was previously available just on paper or in separate systems,” said Chris Hollenbeck, a managing director at Granite Ventures and director on the DecisionView board. “DecisionView integrates information, shows it visibly and provides analytics to understand what the data means.”

“Clinical studies are probably some of the most data rich environments there are, but there wasn't much leverage on that data at all” said CEO Jack Porter. “[Companies] tend to get into situations where they can't see the forest for the trees.”

Launched as Coprindm in 2003, DecisionView raised $6.7 million Series A round in 2004 from investors Granite Ventures, Partech International, and Adobe Ventures. Now the company is generating revenues from its first customer, GlaxoSmithKline plc, and is in advanced discussions with another seven.

“This year, it's really getting those core marquee customers, and focusing on relationships with Accenture, IBM and Dendrite,” Porter said. “And then next year is our major growth year.”

To achieve that goal DecisionView is planning to go back to the venture community by late 2005. The company also plans to expand its product offering. In addition to its software that manages individual trials, DecisionView will introduce a "program manager" that covers pre-clinical development and monitors a product throughout the development cycle to its eventual marketing to consumers.

“There's a great deal of focus on any types of software tool that more efficiently and cost effectively gets drugs to markets quicker,” said Meneghetti.