Akaza Announces the 1,000th Download of OpenClinica Open Source Clinical Trial Software

CAMBRIDGE, MA (PRWEB) May 24, 2006 -— Akaza Research is pleased to announce that over 1000 copies of OpenClinica, an Open Source Clinical trial software platform, have been downloaded since OpenClinica was made available in October 2005. This represents a milestone for Open Source software in the clinical trial arena. This number of downloads affirms Akaza's belief in the pent up demand for a low cost solution to the problem of staging and managing clinical trials.

Proprietary competitive platforms cost in the 100's of thousands of dollars, which, with exorbitant recurring costs quickly become prohibitively expensive for small academic or commercial clinical trials.

Akaza Research is committed to developing affordable and extensible informatics products and services, which serve the needs of academic and non-profit institutions as well as commercial entities engaged in clinical, healthcare and biomedical research.

Akaza believes in using internally and community-developed open source software and open standards to provide professional services and consulting. These open solutions enable Akaza's clients and partners to effectively address the complex challenges of data management, compliance, and interoperability in the modern clinical research and healthcare environment.

The OpenClinica platform was developed using the Java J2EE framework, with a database abstraction layer interoperable with PostgreSQL 8.x (porting to DB2 and SQL Server databases planned in forthcoming releases). OpenClinica runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux v3.x, on top of any Servlet/JSP container that implements the Servlet 2.x and JavaServer Pages 2.x specifications from the Java Community Process. It was developed to run on Apache Jakarta Tomcat 5.x. This architecture provides a secure, robust and extensible system for managing multiple clinical research studies within a centralized repository.

Akaza has chosen to distribute the OpenClinica platform under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Adopting the LGPL provides the following benefits and attributes:

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Allows unlimited distribution of the unmodified OpenClinica source code among both academic and commercial entities; no software licensing fees are incurred. This ensures wide-spread adoption and affordability.

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Restricts others from making proprietary derivative commercial distributions based on the core OpenClinica framework; under the LGPL you are required to publicly release all such modifications, thus extending the platform and its benefits to a wider community.

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Ensures that any changes made to the code for internal use and distribution can remain proprietary and do not have to be incorporated into the core OpenClinica platform; this addresses potential concerns related to revealing security and specialized organizational practices within institutional settings.

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Provides incentives for development of customized solutions and open or proprietary components based on the core (unmodified) OpenClinica platform by Akaza, its partners and other institutions or developers. This benefits both academic and commercial users, while making the overall platform better supported and a more attractive choice for end users and institutions.

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Allows developers who contribute to OpenClinica an ability to maintain a copyright to their work, get attributed for their contributions, and a means to ensure that the core platform will always be available for distribution freely.

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Ensures standardization in the core framework and reduces the likelihood of numerous incompatible variations to the core OpenClinica platform. This assures an open, standardized and robust software platform with a stable code-base and release cycles.

A key long-term goal for adopting the LGPL is to ensure the OpenClinica platform is widely adopted and extended by an expanding network of users, developers and partners in a sustainable manner in both academic research and commercial settings.

OpenClinica™ is an open source web-based software platform that enables sponsors and investigators to manage clinical research data in multi-site studies. It facilitates protocol configuration, design of case report forms, electronic data capture, and study/data management. OpenClinica supports HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 guidelines and is designed as a strictly standards-based, extensible, and modular platform. OpenClinica v1.0 was released in late October 2005 under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). See www.OpenClinica.org.

Akaza Research, a leading provider of open source clinical trial software, is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Akaza has developed and commercialized OpenClinica, the preeminent open source clinical trial data collection and management software. Akaza is bringing Open Source Software solutions into the mainstream of the clinical research enterprise by making high quality, standards-based solutions accessible for private and public research. Akaza Research provides support, training, and consulting services to its customers worldwide. See www.akazaresearch.com.

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