Pivotal Acquires Akcelis, an Industry Leader in Patient Engagement, Recruitment and Retention

Madrid (Spain) and Ghent (Belgium), 3 March 2020 – Pivotal today announced the acquisition of Akcelis BVBA, a leading full-service provider of patient enrolment and retention solutions for clinical trials in the life sciences industry.

The acquisition promises to fundamentally redefine the entire patient recruitment lifecycle. Patient recruitment is a well-known bottleneck in clinical trials as Sponsors can experience challenges across many therapeutic areas. United by a common culture, Akcelis brings the right experience to Pivotal to recruit and retain a unique patient population for difficult-to-recruit trials.

“This acquisition fits perfectly with our commitment to bringing innovation to the clinical development process to deliver efficiencies for our clients,” said Lidia Farr, VP Corporate Development and Finance at Pivotal. “Akcelis will bring advanced, proprietary and analytics-driven technology and services to customise the most efficient and cost-effective approach to significantly improve site selection and patient enrolment and retention strategies for our clients´ clinical trials. As we focus on delivering this value for our customers, we are pleased to welcome our new colleagues to Pivotal to become part of our solution-oriented culture and help advance drug development to improve patient lives.”

Providing analytics-driven services to many large and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, Akcelis manages the entire patient recruitment lifecycle, from recruitment to enrolment to retention. These services utilise innovative, proprietary and highly predictive software analytics to customise the most efficient and cost-effective approach to recruiting patients for a customer's clinical trial.

“Pivotal’s expertise in clinical research and Akcelis’ patient-centric approach to accelerate patient recruitment are the winning combination for scientifically elegant and patient-friendly clinical trials,” said Barbara D’haene and Nathalie Niclaus, Akcelis Managing Directors and Founders. “We look forward to positively impacting Pivotal’s clinical research excellence by implementing innovative digital patient recruitment strategies.”

The integration of Akcelis will allow Pivotal to increase its service offering and provide its current and future clients with patient recruitment experts who can contribute their expertise, advice and solid track record to provide quality accelerated patient recruitment strategies across prospective clinical trials.

About Pivotal

Pivotal was founded in 2001 by Dr. Ibrahim Farr on the principle that strategic medical advice and support should be the backbone of all clinical trials. After working for over two decades in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Farr recognised the need for a medium-sized CRO with a solid internal medical franchise that could act not only as the "doers" but also as the “co-thinkers” for their clients, through its strategic scientific advice. To date, we are the trusted adviser and counsellor for many companies to deliver maximum value in their drug and medical devices development programs. We are a leading privately held European CRO and, since inception, we have experienced a fast and steady organic growth in Europe.

Pivotal´s client portfolio spans major pharmaceutical, biotechnological, medical device and nutrition companies, as well as independent investigators and cooperative groups. We have long-standing relations with over 200 clients. Pivotal has extensive experience across major therapeutic areas and phases I to IV. Our highly customised teams bring to each client a combination of broad industry knowledge and operational excellence, to offer our clients fresh perspectives and breakthrough business insights. Additionally, we have built a strong oncology, innovative therapies, rare diseases and early phases hub that enables us to tackle our customers' most difficult challenges, turning recommendations into concrete actions. By remaining true to our core principles and values, our vision is to become our clients' preferred outsourcing solution partner.

For more information, please visit http://www.pivotal.es

About Akcelis
Akcelis was founded in 2015 in Belgium by Barbara D’haene and Nathalie Niclaus, with the aim to accelerate and support clinical research by offering innovative patient recruitment strategies and high-quality communication services. Akcelis became a key player for patient recruitment across Europe, responding to the high demands of 'patient empowerment' with efficient direct-to-patient communications strategies. Overall, Akcelis has supported many pharmaceutical, biotechs and medical devices companies over the past 5 years in several therapeutic areas. Experienced patient recruitment specialists, online tools, and proven processes speed up starting or ongoing trials across multiple therapeutic areas. The reliable and multilingual patient-facing C-Lys platform plays a key role to reach out to patients.

For more information, please visit www.akcelis.com

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