It may not be news to digital health sector watchers that Bracket, a privately held clinical trial technology provider, was sold again. On March 28, 2017, San Francisco private equity firm Genstar Capital purchased the company for an undisclosed price. Bracket, a Pennsylvania-based clinical trial technology, has changed hands several times over the years.
Bracket serves biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, as well as clinial research organizations. It leverages Bracket eCOA™, a platform for electronic clinical outcomes assessments that collects information from patients (ePRO), clinicians (eClinRO) and other observers (eObsRO).
The company started off as a division of United BioSource, which was acquired by Medco Health Solutions (NYSE: MHS) for $740 million in 2010. Medco was then purchased by Express Scripts (NASDAQ: ESRX) for $29 billion in 2011. That mega deal created one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the country, and left many speculating that Bracket would soon get the axe since it was no longer a core business. Two years later, in August 2013, Express Scripts sold Bracket to Parthenon Capital Partners for an undisclosed price.
In June 2015, Parthenon Capital started the add-on acquisitions. Bracket acquired Boston-based Clintara and integrated the Clintara platform of surveillance strategies developed for clinical trials within its eCOA platform. The integration included Clintara’s C-VISA Subject Eligibility Validation program designed to ensure that appropriate patients are enrolled in clinical trials.
Then, in November 2016, Bracket acquired California-based CLINapps Inc., an international software development and consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical industry. SmartSupplies, CLINapps’ flagship enterprise clinical trial material management software solutions, provided Bracket the ability to manage end-to-end clinical inventory management for sponsors.
