OCTAGON RESEARCH SOLUTIONS ANNOUNCES NEW RELEASE OF STARTINGPOINT®
Wayne, Pa. - December 6, 2005 - Octagon Research Solutions, the leader in the electronic transformation of clinical R&D, today announced the general availability of StartingPoint, version 2.0. StartingPoint was developed to provide a standard authoring platform for regulatory submission documents and has been the market-leading templates tool since its inception in 2003 with more than 20 current clients. The new release of the Microsoft Word-based template collection enhances frequently used features and introduces new functionality that will significantly reduce formatting efforts required for regulatory submission documentation.
The advent of electronic submissions and the acceptance of the electronic common technical document (eCTD) submission format by regulatory authorities has led most pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations to focus on implementing authoring standards and templates to support electronic submission processes. StartingPoint was developed as an easy-to-use authoring tool that enables authors to focus on content rather than format, and eases the process of making electronic submission-ready documents.
The StartingPoint package includes the core template, which defines the formatting and automation functionality, nearly 200 authoring templates across all five CTD modules, test scripts for clients to use when validating StartingPoint within their environments, a comprehensive user guide, as well as a style guide. The automated toolbar provides functionality for custom styles, pre-formatted tables, page orientation, frequently used symbol characters, and instructional text regarding content and format.
StartingPoint 2.0 continues Octagon’s commitment to simplify the submission authoring process and speed up electronic publishing processes. The latest version includes support for auto-numbered heading styles and quick-access buttons for commonly used tasks such as inserting captions, cross-references, and additional symbols. Copying and pasting have been improved through a toolbar button that helps eliminate the introduction of unsupported or error-prone styles into a templated document.
John Lawrie, vice president of process solutions at Octagon, noted, “Submission document authoring, review, and approval processes can be extremely complex and require attention to both content and format. New standards such as the eCTD are adding to this complexity. StartingPoint continues to evolve to support this changing environment and to allow document authors to focus on content. The new release combines user-requested features with other innovative enhancements that will simplify the tedious formatting tasks associated with traditional authoring methods.”
Matt Stroschein, senior director of regulatory operations at Octagon, added, “We advise our clients to start the submission process by implementing authoring standards because that is where they will see a quick and recurring return on investment. StartingPoint enables companies to do this with minimal effort and its use results in maximum efficiency in authoring, review, and electronic publishing processes.”
About Octagon Research Solutions, Inc.
Octagon is a leading process-centric solutions provider that offers a suite of regulatory, clinical, process and IT solutions to the life sciences industry. Octagon synchronizes processes and increases automation to reduce island-to-island inefficiencies within the clinical research and development process. We leverage the power of electronic submissions through cross-functional eSub expertise, a holistic process approach, deep domain knowledge and creative use of technology. Octagon is headquartered in Wayne, PA, with offices in Boston, MA, and Costa Mesa, CA and European Headquarters in Amersham, UK. For more information please visit www.octagonresearch.com.
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