Shareholders in clinical technology specialist ClinPhone yesterday voted in favour of the UK company’s agreed £91 million (US$181.4 million) acquisition by US-based contract research organisation (CRO) Parexel International.
The acquisition for 135 pence per share is still subject to legal clearances. The relevant court hearings are expected to be held on 8 and 13 August, with the takeover becoming effective on 14 August 2008.
Recently a potential obstacle to the ClinPhone-Parexel deal was cleared when rival US CRO Quintiles Transnational decided not to go ahead with an offer for the UK company.
Parexel already has a well-established presence in the eClinical space through its technology business, Perceptive Informatics, whose portfolio includes medical imaging analytic capabilities, a Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) and Interactive Voice and Web Response (IVR) technologies as well as a number of integration and reporting technologies and services.
ClinPhone is seen as offering complementary capabilities, such as the electronic data capture system it acquired with US company Datalabs in October 2006, experience with electronic patient-reported outcomes and additional IVR technologies. ClinPhone also has a CTMS system, TrialWorks, that targets a different market segment from Parexel’s corresponding platform, IMPACT.
