January 17, 2012: Greenphire and Merge Healthcare form exclusive partnership to integrate clinical payment and EDC platforms
Greenphire announced today that it has formed an exclusive strategic partnership with the clinical trials division of Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE), a leading provider of clinical trial solutions, to offer integrated functionality between Merge’s EDC technology and Greenphire’s eClinicalGPS site and vendor payment management technology. The integrated EDC and payment technology offering will enable both companies' pharmaceutical, medical device, and CRO clients to further automate and centrally track all clinical payments on a global basis.
“Our alliance with Merge enables us to collaboratively bring an innovative and complementary set of technologies to the clinical research industry, driving additional efficiency to sponsors, CROs and sites on a global basis,” said Greenphire CEO Sam Whitaker. “Our integrated functionality with Merge adds value to existing Merge and Greenphire clients, and offers operational efficiencies which our industry has never achieved previously."
The functionality achieved through this strategic partnership will streamline implementation processes and create additional efficiencies for clients, enabling users to automate research site and clinical vendor payments in local currency through Greenphire's centralized, global web-based payment engine. It will also streamline setup times, decrease sponsor, site and CRO administrative burdens on an on-going basis, reduce payment administration costs and timelines, and increase site satisfaction. Additionally, centrally automating global clinical payments will significantly reduce costs for both sponsors and CROs by electronically automating what have historically been multi-step and manual payment administration processes.
“This partnership demonstrates that Merge is committed to addressing the needs of our clinical trials customers, specifically those who have asked for an integrated site payment system for their clinical programs,” said Jeff Surges, CEO of Merge Healthcare. “We’re looking forward to working with Greenphire and to improving workflow processes and efficiencies for our clients.” To date, Merge is already using the integrated functionality to execute three unique projects, with several more planned for 2012.
