ICON and MedAvante, Inc., a provider of centralized psychiatric patient evaluation, have signed an alliance agreement combining ICON’s global reach and expertise in clinical trial management with MedAvante’s platform to centralize and calibrate the assessment of patients undergoing treatment in clinical trials. The alliance aims to provide pharmaceutical and biotechnology trial sponsors with reliable and precise measurements of a patients’ response to therapies.

“MedAvante has developed a platform that addresses a major cause of clinical trial failure in Central Nervous System (CNS) development: variability in both clinical diagnosis of the disorder being studied and ongoing assessment of the severity of the patient’s symptoms in a consistent and standardized fashion,” says Dr. John Hubbard, president, ICON Clinical Research. “ICON is constantly striving to offer our pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners innovative clinical trial solutions to enhance the drug development process.”

“ICON is a proven leader in the provision of high quality clinical research services,” says Paul Gilbert, chief executive officer of MedAvante. “This alliance extends our ability to offer our services across the industry and across the globe. Most importantly, however, is what this alliance provides to CNS drug developers: The ability on a larger scale to reduce the high rate of failed CNS clinical trials which the industry recognizes as unacceptable in terms of cost and lost time.”