By Allan Maurer
RALEIGH, NC—When Peter Bechtel, president and CEO of eCast Corp. founded the company in 1999, the small firm had a grand scheme for bringing a higher order of technology to running clinical trials. “At the time, there was no such thing,” Bechtel says. So developing the business meant building the parts.
The company created an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in 2001, which recently joined an elite group of EMR firms that have met the stringent criteria for certification by The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. It is the only NC EMR firm to win the certification.
“We used revenues from our EMR software as fuel to keep the company going while we created the other parts needed,” Bechtel says. Those parts include eCast Risk Manager system for predicting and managing chronic diseases. From the beginning, however, the company planned to approach large networks of doctors with a new spin on conducting clinical trials.
It would offer the physician networks not only the eCast EMR and disease management systems, but also the kind of data repository that allows the practices to achieve clinical integration. At the same time, the company offers the network’s doctors the ability to engage in very controlled forms of clinical research.
Skin in the game
That can be very lucrative for the physicians, explains Bechtel. A starting investigator makes about $30,000 and an experienced one $70,000. Ecast receives a $6,000 annual fee. The doctor networks are not charged for the EMR and disease management software until the company and the network generates income from clinical research.
“They love it when a vendor comes in and has a lot of risk, a lot of skin in the game,” says Bechtel. “You have to give them something of high value.”
Once the company landed a major client—United Physicians in Charleston, SC—it began attracting investors. “We got a sizeable contract that showed this is a real working model,” says Bechtel.
The company has raised a total of $12.5 million in backing from private investors since 2006, the latest round in March this year and has grown substantially. “A year ago we had eight people,” says Bechtel. “Now we have 78.”
Getting to trials more quickly saves money
The company’s clinical research management services are attractive to Contract Research Organizations such as PPD and Quintiles because it has built what Bechtel calls “a gigantic, content rich platform of data. It helps them with their research in finding clinical trial patient candidates, trial sites, and the investigators they need, so they don’t have to spend months looking.”
If they’re testing a drug for high blood pressure, eCast can scan its data repository and in an hour tell them they’ve found 120 sites and 4,000 patients that meet their requirements. “We cut their costs dramatically,” Bechtel says.
The company also manages its own sites with clinical research coordinators who make sure the quality of the trials are conducted to eCast specifications and standards.
“Patent protection of a new drug starts when it’s invented and lasts 17 years,” says Bechtel. “So every day you delay getting a drug to market costs millions. So getting a trial started quickly and finished quickly and correctly is important.”
The company has completed 46 contracts in its first year of full operations. “We have plenty of cash, we’re on track with revenue and budgeted tightly,” says Bechtel. “Our growth is happening faster than we expected. We expected to be in the range of 81 doctor investigators at this point and we have 480.”
Like a lot of successful start-ups, eCast evolved from finding a need and filling it. “In the late 1990s,” he says, “I was running my prior company, a practice management software company, looking for the next big thing. I started talking to doctors, networks of doctors, and research companies. I spent months listening to their problems and what they were trying to achieve and came up with this idea. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.”
On the Web: www.ecastcorp.com
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