Patent ID: 7676383

Claim:
An electronic method of analyzing budgets for clinical trials, the method comprising: (a) inputting a clinical trial budget into a processor, the budget including activities and associated activity costs of a clinical trial, the activities including at least monitoring of clinical investigator sites that are conducting the clinical trial; (b) classifying the activities of the inputted clinical trial budget into a set of standardized service categories; (c) electronically allocating, using the processor, the associated activity costs with the respective standardized service category so that budget costs of the clinical trial can be objectively analyzed; (d) inputting a set of assumption specifications of the clinical trial into the processor, the assumption specifications including at least the number of patients involved in the clinical trial; (e) calculating in the processor the per unit costs of the assumption specifications; (f) equalizing the activities and the associated activity costs against reference assumption specifications based on at least the per unit costs via calculations performed in the processor; and (g) outputting at least one of (i) a report of the associated activity costs with the respective standardized service category, (ii) a report of the per unit costs of the assumption specifications, and (iii) a report of the equalized activity costs, for use in analyzing budgets for clinical trials.