Cardiac safety specialist eResearchTechnology (eRT) will be the new owner of the unit, which provides the collection, interpretation and distribution of cardiac safety data for clinical trials. However, for the next ten years the two firms have fostered an agreement that will see Covance continue to offer the services through eRT's centralised ECG platform. For this, Covance will receive "certain referral fees" and will have the potential to reap in a further $14m through the order backlog transferred to eRT and revenues generated by new contracts signed over the 10-year period. The revenue generated from the divested unit only accounted for less than 2 per cent of Covance's annual net revenues and the firm said that it now plans to "focus more attention and investments on growing our service offerings in the larger markets we serve". The contract research organisation's (CRO's) main engines are its Early Development services segment, which includes preclinical toxicology, analytical chemistry, clinical pharmacology services, and research products; along with its equally large Late-Stage Development unit, which includes central laboratory, Phase II- III clinical development, commercialisation services, and cardiac safety services.
