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Comment by rmorrison | Hacker News Reader

Rick from Comprehend here, we're also hiring. Definitely reach out if you're interested in transforming the medical industry! http://www.comprehend.com/careers

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Don't most Life Sciences companies already do this internally? I mean, I only have anecdotal evidence, but I worked on and released a couple versions of something for Abbott Labs that sounds eerily similar to what the press release mentions you doing (actually, went a lot further into budget forecasting (including updating and alerting for deviations based on incoming data automatically) and automatic payment calculation and authorization in addition to collaboration, data input, time keeping, and dashboarding for analysts/executives.

In any event, good luck to you. From what I've seen from the inside, newer tech stacks can deal some serious disruption in a very short time frame.

Most companies do something internally, but it's typically slow, expensive, out-of-date, breaks frequently, and is prone to errors.

I invested in a clinical trials company many years ago (operating an investigative site), and I'm curious what kind of traction you've gotten from the big pharmaceutical companies?

I totally get how it is a compelling story for investors, but I have serious doubts about adoption and use.

It was my experience that data and sound record keeping was a secondary to approvals. Many times paperwork was "corrected" and patients were excluded because of serious adverse events. Unless your model is to help identify exclusionary criteria retroactively?

The industry has been drastically changing over the past decade. 15 years ago, all data collection was paper based. Then came Electronic Data Collection systems. Now, there are cloud systems likes Medidata Rave and Veeva which are doing exceptionally well. This change has created tremendous opportunity for new startups.

This is happening across all enterprise verticals, and this is why there is such an opportunity for enterprise startups. As Warren Hogarth says in the original article "There’s about a trillion dollars of enterprise software", much of which will "transition to [specialized] enterprise software... and create multi-billion dollar companies".

Based on your linkedin profiles neither of you has a life sciences background.

How did you guys come up with this idea?

We both do. I've actually been involved in writing clinical analytics software since 2000, including having been one of the lead developers on software used by the FDA and top pharma. Jud previously had a consulting company in the space performing data integrations.

Silly question, but you don't mention security or HIPAA/HITECH anywhere on your site (or in jobs).

Are you guys working on that, or is it just 'assumed' that your stack and cloud capability is compliant?

Subjects enrolled in clinical trials fall under informed consent and are outside HIPPA/HITECH. We actually take steps beyond either of those standards to ensure the data, costing pharma billions to create, is not breached.

Congrats, cool topic. Impressive stuff.

We're tackling eTMF plus other R&D from a content perspective through SaaS. See you're integrating with Medidata as well.

Greetings from Pleasanton ;)

Veeva? You should stop by next time you're in Palo Alto, would love to meet. Email is in my profile.

Do you hire non-Americans? (Not that I'm looking at the moment, but I think this should be mentioned on startup job postings).

Yes we do = )

Rick, one of the biggest costs I hear about in the field is the cost of pre-allocating funds to upcoming trials without knowing how much to pre-allocate. The other is knowing how to profile clinicians and help them to raise their ability to recruit patients. Do you manage to address either of these points?

Congratulations Rick! Great news.

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