NEW YORK and TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medidata Solutions (NASDAQ: MDSO), a leading global provider of hosted clinical development solutions, today announced that EPS is the first Asia-based contract research organization (CRO) to reach Rave Accredited Plus, the most advanced level in Medidata’s ASPire to Win® program for CROs and other service providers. The accreditation enables EPS, headquartered in Tokyo, to serve as a one-stop shop of Medidata Rave® implementation services for sponsors conducting clinical trials in Asia. EPS has invested in the Rave training of data management teams in both Japan and China, positioning itself to serve sponsors across Asia.

With broad therapeutic expertise, including oncology and cardiovascular, EPS provides a full range of clinical trial services to pharmaceutical companies in Japan, China and Southeast Asia, including Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Since joining Medidata’s ASPire to Win program in 2007, EPS has worked on a number of Rave trials in Japan and is now mobilized to meet demand for Rave implementations across Asia.

“With this accreditation, we are happy to offer an expanded set of Rave-related services to our customers,” said Hisao Imamura Senior Manager, Global Business Development, EPS. “Medidata Rave – with its multi-language capabilities, flexible workflow and easy-to-use interface – is a preferred solution in executing global studies.”

As a Rave Accredited Plus partner, EPS can provide its customers with a full suite of Medidata Rave-related services, including end user training, study build, reporting, outputs, integrations and migrations. As a result, EPS can further enable clients to leverage Medidata Rave to improve the quality and the efficiency of global studies and provide sites with a user-friendly system across Asia. Moreover, EPS can leverage Rave’s standards-based open architecture for data sharing with other clinical solutions, including EPS’ interactive voice and web response (IVR/IWR) system.

“We are thrilled that EPS has attained this ASPire to Win accreditation,” said Graham Bunn, Vice President of Global CRO Partnerships, Medidata Solutions. “As a leading CRO in this region, EPS’s services will be critical to support clinical research activity in Japan, China and Southeast Asia.”

Medidata first announced ASPire to Win April 2005 as a partner program designed to enable select CROs and other service providers to offer Medidata Rave implementation services. Since then, ASPire to Win has grown to include 20 partners, ranging from smaller clinical consultancies to large, global CROs. For more information about the ASPire to Win program, visit www.mdsol.com/partnerships/cros.htm.

About Medidata Solutions Worldwide

Medidata Solutions (www.mdsol.com) is a leading global provider of hosted clinical development solutions that enhance the efficiency of customers’ clinical development processes and optimize their research and development investments. Medidata products and services allow customers to achieve clinical results more efficiently and effectively by streamlining the design, planning and management of key aspects of the clinical development process, including protocol development (Medidata Designer™), investigator benchmarking and budgeting (Medidata Grants Manager™), contract research organization (CRO) benchmarking and budgeting (Medidata CRO Contractor™), and the capture, management, analysis and reporting of clinical trial data (Medidata Rave®). Medidata’s diverse customer base spans pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, academic institutions, CROs and other research organizations, and includes more than 20 of the top 25 global pharmaceutical companies

About EPS

EPS (www.eps.co.jp), established in 1991, is a leading Japanese CRO with 2,200 employees helping global customers rediscover and appreciate true value in the Asian markets, including Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. EPS remains the clients' first choice in monitoring, data management and biostatistics with dynamic assignment algorithms.