For years, companies have offered remote data entry systems to transfer data from trial sites to a central server. But Big Pharma has by and large stuck to its old-fashioned paper ways. Now several start-ups are offering a new breed of web-based RDE and the pharmaceutical industry is starting to take interest. But before embracing an online approach to data collection, drug companies want proof that doing so will save them time and money. Pharma companies must also evaluate how to integrate data collection and management into the rest of their infrastructures. Collaboration rather than competition might best enable pharmaceutical; companies to fully realize the benefits of web-enabled trials through the cooperative sharing of resources.

Senior execs from SmithKline Beecham, Pfizer and Merck Medco assess their progress in e-business and their partnership needs with small companies. SmithKline Beecham's newly named VP, E-commerce, Spyros Stavrakas, is getting a handle on the different ways in which SB's various divisions are currently using the Internet. Merck-Medco's VP of Physician Office Technology, Kyle Farmer discusses his company's online prescribing initiatives, which includes a pilot program that will eventually involve 11 start-ups.. The VP for information management at Pfizer Central Research, James Milson, describes the ways in which his company is using the Internet to streamline the clinical trial process, particularly with respect to FDA and submissions and patient recruitment.

NextPhase is applying Internet technologies to streamline the drug development process, primarily through the electronic collection and management of clinical trial data.

PHT Corp.'s all-electronic data collection systems, the PlexxNet Patient LogPads and PlexxNet Investigator LogPads,are designed to collect, transmit and manage trial data. They unite researchers, trial study subjects, and clinical data in real time via the web site, enabling drug sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) to view the trial information of different test sites instantaneously and from any place in the world.