Pennsylvania-based CRF Health, provider of electronic clinical outcome assessment solutions (eCOA) for clinical trials, has acquired pioneering digital health company Entra Health for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will expand CRF’s offerings into the mobile and wireless medical device sector, helping to establish the global company’s network of solutions to collect, manage and analyze biometric and clinical trial data.
The acquisition of San Diego, California-based Entra Health formalizes an existing relationship, representatives for CRFs said in a statement. Entra is perhaps best known for inking a deal with Nokia in early 2010 that put an app in Nokia's appstore that connected early smartphones to Entra's Bluetooth-connected glucose meter.
“Combining CRF’s extensive global eCOA and electronic informed consent expertise with Entra Health’s clinical platform, medical device innovation and regulatory insight, we can now offer selection, production and delivery of devices together with the complete integration of data,” CRF Health CEO Rachael Wyllie said in a statement. “CRF is now positioned to build upon our patient-centric approach, bringing new levels of connectivity to devices and cloud services much in demand from our customers.”
CRF Health’s patient-facing offerings are the TrialConsent and TrialMax eCOA solutions. TrialConsent is a website to help secure informed consent while ensuring the patients fully understand clinical trials by engaging them in comprehension reporting. TrialMax is an app-based protocol compliance tool that gives digestible information via interactive assessments and support tools.
Entra offers EntraCare, a remote patient monitoring solution that is used around the world via the company’s MyHealthPoint platform, an integrated system for collecting and analyzing biometric data across a variety of wellness and clinical devices. The platform allows for remote monitoring of both clinical trial and non-trial patient populations across a variety of therapeutic areas as well as post-surgical, preventative and chronic care. One of its most popular devices is the MyGlucoHealth brand of wireless-enabled blood glucose meters, which it supplies internationally for patient use as well as for clinical trials in diabetes research.
“This acquisition represents a significant step in our growth and enables us to deliver our solutions to a wider marker with the backing of CRF Health’s global infrastructure,” Richard Strobridge, CEO and co-founder of Entra said in a statement.
Strobridge said the combination of the two companies will allow them to strengthen operational capabilities and invest in future technology.
