Phase Forward

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Phase Forward Incorporated

Type	Public (NASDAQ: PFWD)
Founded	Massachusetts, USA (1997)
Headquarters	Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
Key people	Robert (Bob) K. Weiler, CEO Paul A. Bleicher, Chairman and Founder
Industry	Data Management for Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials and Pharmacovigilance
Products	InForm for EDC Clintrial for CDM Clintrace for Pharmacovigilance
Revenue	▲$87.07 million USD (2006^[1])
Net income	▲ $3.34 million USD (2006^[1])
Employees	409 (2005) ^[1]
Website	www.phaseforward.com

Phase Forward Incorporated (NASDAQ: PFWD), founded in 1997 is a Massachusettes company that develops data management systems for the pharmaceutical industry for clinical trials and for pharmacovigilance (drug safety monitoring).

Robert (Bob) K. Weiler has served as President and CEO since 2002^[2]. Weiler succeeded company founder Paul Bleicher who had held the role on an interim basis since earlier in the year. Previously Shiv Tasker had been President and CEO since early in 1998. Bleicher, as founder, had previously held this role from the company's inception until Tasker was appointed.

Phase Forward was founded based on the inspiration of Paul Bleicher who had been applying internet technology to clinical trials since the early 1990s. Bleicher had founded and moderated the clinical trials email list, which was an early discussion forum on the topic of clinical trials. At its peak, the forum had more than 5,000 subscribers. Before founding Phase Forward, Bleicher had earned an M.D. Ph.D. and had experience as a principal investigator, an executive at Parexel (a contract research organization), and Vice President of Clinical affairs at Alpha-Beta Technology. In the latter two roles, Bleicher had gained experience in designing and running clinical trials. He also had learned that the existing paper-based systems were flawed and slow.

Bleicher started thinking about his ideas for using new internet web browser technology for collecting clinical trial data in 1996. He started to discuss this with his friend Richard Dale, who had previously been an executive at Vermeer Technologies (the company that created Frontpage), which had been acquired by Microsoft. Dale had a technical and information systems background, and had also been involved in the founding and early days of other startups. Together, they worked on a business plan, which was eventually funded by Atlas Venture and Northbridge Venture Partners in November of 1997.

Phase Forward's initial product was InForm. It's used to collect data over the internet relating to the conduct, management and progress of clinical trials. Most of the data collected relate directly to the medical observations of patients who are enrolled in the trial.

In 2001, Phase Forward acquired Provenda Biometrics^[3], a company with electronic patient diary technology that allowed patients to record data into handheld computers for inclusion into the main database relating to a clinical trial. Also in 2001, Phase Forward acquired Clinsoft Corporation^[4] (formerly Domain Pharma Corporation). Clinsoft's products included Clintrial, the leading clinical database system (for collecting and managing data from all of a company's clinical trials) and Clintrace, a system for tracking safety related data for pharmaceutical drugs.

In July 2004, Phase Forward ran a initial public offering, led by Thomas Weisel Partners, Piper Jaffray, and Raymond James & Associates^[5]. Subsequently, Phase Forward acquired Lincoln Technologies^[6].