Quintiles cuts ribbon on new European headquarters
The firm – which provides clinical, commercial, consulting and capital solutions worldwide – opened the doors to its new facility a year after it first broke ground on the plans.
It previously operated its head office functions from three buildings in Bracknell, Berkshire.
By putting 500 of its total 2,000 UK staff in one building, the company believes it will achieve the level of collaboration needed to survive in the efficiency-focussed market of today.
Laura Wilson, corporate communications manager for the firm told Outsourcing-Pharma: “With employees from across our four pillars being located in the same building, this move provides opportunity for greater collaboration and cooperation, to deliver a seamless service to customers across the spectrum of drug development and commercialisation.
“This is particularly important in the New Health Landscape, with payers and regulators making complex decisions about a particular drug based on its safety, efficacy and value.
“Their decision-making processes increasingly rely on assessment of real world patient outcomes in addition to clinical trial data, so our move reflects this convergence in the industry.”
Vision for Europe
The latest move is part of Quintiles new focus on growing in the European market, particularly in the UK.
The firm also opened a laboratory and office in Edinburgh in 2009, as well as investing in an expansion for its research unit at Guy's Hospital, London the same year.
In the new office’s opening ceremony, Quintiles founder, chairman and CEO Dennis Gillings said: “With such a wealth of scientific, medical and commercial expertise in the UK, the move has encouraged more cross-discipline collaboration to better serve Quintiles’ customers and power them forward in the fast-morphing world of biopharma.”
Speaking to Outsourcing-Pharma, Wilson put special emphasis on the importance of patient recruitment within Europe.
She said: “In the last decade, Europe contributed nearly 50 per cent of all of the patients we enrolled globally.
“Last year, Europe managed 40 per cent of the actively enrolling investigators, with the UK managing more than 200 of those actively enrolling investigators.”
