Berry Consultants, the US-based consulting group specialising in the Bayesian approach to medical statistics, has acquired full ownership of the FACTS (Fixed and Adaptive Clinical Trial Simulator) tool from Tessella, joint developer of the software.
No financial details of the agreement were disclosed. The technology, which Berry Consultants president Dr Scott Berry described as “the flight simulator of a clinical trial”, was previously joint-owned by Tessella, an international analytics, software services and consulting company with headquarters in Abingdon, UK.
As part of the transfer, Tessella will continue to act as an information-technology service contractor to Berry Consultants, providing support and transitional assistance as needed.
Advanced designs
FACTS enables biostatisticians and clinical-research teams rapidly to create and compare innovative, advanced clinical-trial designs, such as adaptive studies.
“We believe in the future all clinical trials will require the type of detailed, complex, simulations that FACTS provides,” Scott Berry commented.
“It allows trials to be run millions of times before the actual trial – to think through all the possibilities and outcomes before they occur.”
According to the president, it is the “natural progression and growth” of Berry Consultants to expand and develop FACTS going forward.
Seamless transition
Dr Alan Bell, life sciences director at Tessella, said the company was looking forward to working with Berry Consultants “to smoothly and seamlessly transition support, project management and software-engineering responsibilities over the next three years”.
The company will continue to work with Berry Consultants “supporting the execution of adaptive clinical trials”, Bell added.
