About Us

Founded in 2001 by Dr. Gary Sachs and Mr. Dan DeBonis, Concordant Rater Systems sought an answer to a growing concern — a way to use technology to improve CNS clinical research. Subjectivity has always been a key part of diagnosis for CNS indications but the opportunity to improve upon current subjective methods drove product development. They believed in the importance of rater training to accomplish score standardization across clinician-rated scales, but they also believed that rater training alone, even with the use of centralized raters, could not completely address the reasons for failed CNS studies.

Understanding the pressures of drug development and the cost of failed trials from both an economic and societal perspective, Dr. Sachs and Mr. DeBonis developed a solution that helps drug developers make better informed decisions on compound development and future CNS R&D investment.

They developed and patented a “Computer system and method for training, certifying and monitoring human clinical raters.” The CRS Clinical Rater Station and methodology was born to improve detection of drug placebo response, drive efficiencies through scale and offer drug developers real-time actionable results. This was accomplished through the provision of a second set of parallel assessment data, which offered the ability to take corrective action throughout the study as opposed to acquiring results at study closure – often too late to foresee and rectify problems.

Today CRS offers a comprehensive methodology and product suite that responds to clients’ needs to mitigate the risk of failed studies, to defend positive or negative clinical results of compounds and to bring optimal drugs to market in a timely and cost-effective manner, while minimizing subject risk.

CRS was acquired by United BioSource Corporation (UBC) in October, 2010 and continues to manage its operations from the Boston, MA location. Click here to view the announcement