Drug Safety Gains Efficacy Through New Managed Service

Drug research, in some ways, moves at a rampant pace, but getting these inventions to market can be frustratingly slow.

The biggest impediment is often proving the drugs are safe.

Making that process more efficient is the life’s work of Foresight Group International AG. This global professional services outfit helps drug companies handle both “clinical and post-marketing drug safety and surveillance and risk management.”

Foresight also had the vision to connect with Oracle (News - Alert), and it is Oracle’s software that forms the basis of the new Oracle Argus Safety-Powered by Foresight, which is served up as either a managed or hosted service.

This marks a dramatic shift towards services, said Wade Weinzetl, who is driving the new offering. “Our customers had been asking us to setup a hosting and managed services component of the company, as they no longer wanted to host in-house at a higher cost,” Weinzetl said. “We set up multiple data centers and began to speak to clients about our services.”

Weinzetl sees this as the perfect migration for current clients: “The same personnel who have implemented over 50 instances of Argus are the very same people undertaking the managed services for hosted instances. Not only does this ensure quality, but it also helps our clients conserve resources by leveraging our pool, as opposed to their own staff. Furthermore, we are technology agnostic, so we can work with any software the client may have.”

The service is hosted in the U.S. to serve North America, and in Switzerland to serve Europe.

Here is what the service comes with, Foresight says:

• “Secure GxP environment including 64-bit databases, storage arrays, web server farm and Citrix servers, firewalls, and all operational and network components
• Installation Qualification (IQ) and Operational Qualification (OQ) on all GxP components
• Foresight’s management policies and SOPs, including backup and disaster recovery
• Hosting of Oracle Argus Safety with Oracle 11g as its underlying database, along with Argus Insight/Analytics
• Optional connectivity to E2B gateways and third-party EDC systems”

There are two versions of the service to meet high end and lower end needs.

“In the full version, Foresight will provide all configuration and validation work, infrastructure management, and application support. In our ‘Light’ offering, the client will provide 1st and 2nd Level application support and perform most configuration work, with the exception of systems. Foresight will still oversee all validation and infrastructure management,” the company said.