Articles
MedNet: Managing the Whole Trial
A ClinPage Interview with Timothy Pratt, PhD
Originally published on ClinPage.com on June 12, 2007
Tim Pratt cut his teeth in the world of medical devices, at Guidant and Medtronic, where a defibrillator can record 2,500 different variables. Fashioning a career out of working with such surging rivers of data, he landed at MedNet Solutions, where his title is chief marketing officer and principal scientific advisor.
If you ask us, having interviewed Pratt a few times over the years, he's having a little too good a time. Is it fair that someone relishes their work with such unabashed delight? Not really. But it makes it fun to talk to Pratt, who's a nurse, a PhD, and an inventor with patents under his belt.
For those not familiar with it, MedNet is a clinical trial technology platform that includes electronic data capture (EDC). But its system includes functionality for clinical data management, clinical trial management and document management. There is no batch processing of data over night; it's all happening in real time in a browser window.
Technology Suite
Although he's based in Minneapolis, where the shy folks are as easy to find as corn, Pratt is anything but meek—a vestige, perhaps, of his Australian roots. He makes no small claims for his system. "People who use our technology get very clean data," he says. "It's a reduced training burden. They tend to enroll quicker and faster."
After a recent conference, he noted, "We had two dozen end users go out of their way to come up to our booth; they all said this is the easiest system to use." The privately held MedNet releases no financial figures. Pratt says it's profitable, without burdensome debt or nervous venture capitalists second-guessing key decisions.
Clinical Home Companion
MedNet's solution, Pratt notes, is priced 25-50 percent lower than that of his most prominent competitors. He says several of the biggest EDC firms in the industry have a limited ability to serve all their customers at the exalted levels that sponsor companies expect. That, Pratt believes, creates an opportunity for MedNet.
"Generally we don't hear good things," he says of his largest rivals. "We hear pretty unpleasant things about responsiveness, out of scope charges, and unwillingness to configure the product to the customer's design. We pick up those people. They end up very, very happy."
MedNet counts Abbott, Allergan, Boston Scientific, Medtronic and AstraZeneca as customers. "Most of our customers come back for more," Pratt says. "They really like the system. Somewhere north of 85 or 90 percent is repeat business. Our biggest problem is awareness. Just people knowing who we are."
