Pfizer Selects Exco InTouch to Enhance Patient Communication in Clinical Trials

Pfizer Selects Exco InTouch to Enhance Patient Communication in Clinical
Trials

(3 December, 2008) Exco InTouch, the leading mobile messaging provider for the pharmaceutical industry, announces that its text messaging technology ATLAS has been selected by Pfizer, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies to enhance the efficacy of its patient recruitment and retention in Phase I clinical trials. Exco InTouch's integrated system will enable Pfizer to quickly identify, contact and assess relevant patients and maintain patient communication throughout the life of its trials across Belgium, Singapore and the US. Traditional methods of patient recruitment such as letter-based processes can often be time-consuming, costly and sometimes ineffective. Text message-based methods are quick and non-intrusive, offering healthcare providers a simple, cost-effective and direct-to-patient system of communication.

ATLAS from Exco InTouch is a unique, regulatory compliant system used to send text messages to any mobile phone. ATLAS can be integrated with a wide range of existing healthcare management systems and is already used in a wide range of Phase I clinics to create regulatory compliant messaging services for patient recruitment. Pfizer specifically required a solution that could be fully integrated with its own volunteer database, allowing immediate text message-based communication with selected patients and enabling fast assessment of a potential subject's availability via text message. With the integrated text messaging system from Exco InTouch, Pfizer is able to promptly send alerts from a range of text message templates to the recipient via their own mobile phone (for example "Text YES to 54321 to system, allowing recruitment staff to make immediate decisions regarding a patient's eligibility to participate in a study.

This fully integrated system developed by Exco InTouch also offers benefits for patients already enrolled on studies, as the system enables investigators to send protocol-specific questions, events or reminders to patients using ATLAS. Text messaging technology for sponsor/patient interaction has been proven to significantly improve patient compliance and retention throughout the life of a clinical study. In addition, ATLAS also provides Pfizer with a complete audit trail by tracking the delivery of text messages with receipts which are sent directly back into the system, which enables compliance with FDA 21 CFR part 11 audit trail requirements.

Exco InTouch offers a novel way to improve patient selection for clinical trials as well as retaining subjects throughout the study. This
low-technology solution utilises a powerful yet simple system to provide a reliable approach to improve patient recruitment in the pharmaceutical industry. The success of this close collaboration reflects Exco InTouch's ability to assist companies to streamline clinical trials and offer significant productivity gains.