Placing quality and innovation at the heart of drug development

02-May-2016 - Last updated on 03-May-2016 at 16:59 GMT

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Related tags Drug development process Pharmacology

Next week, sponsors and CROs will gather in Princeton, New Jersey to discuss how integrating quality, innovation and collaboration can transform the clinical trial process, bringing medicines to patients in a more expedited manner.

The Avoca Quality Consortium Summit, which takes place May 10th and 11th, brings together more than 60 pharma, biotech, and clinical service companies.

Lakshmi Sundar, VP, Strategy and Development, The Avoca Group, explained to us that these themes emphasize how quality needs to be "at the heart of all areas of drug development."

"Quality is not just about checking boxes on whether certain things have been done correctly or not," she added. "Quality is not just about being compliant to policies, procedures and rules. Quality is a mindset and operating philosophy that needs to be woven through the entire drug development process to understand risk, manage it and introduce drugs to market efficiently."

According to Sundar, there has been an industry push to increase collaboration across borders and organizations in order to improve quality and to implement changes. While there are several reasons for this, the main driver is that traditional approaches are no longer sustainable - from both a cost and value perspective for all stakeholders.

"The entire drug development process continues to have inefficiencies and could still benefit from a lot of process improvement," said Sundar. "The time and cost implications of these inefficiencies are astronomical."

However, recent advancements in technology have resulted in better tools and more data, both of which have positive implications in the drug development process.

As Sundar explained, "Technological advancements are also leading to more informed patients who feel empowered to play a more critical role in their medical choices and care options."

The emergence of the empowered patient, due to these technological advances, will also be a point of focus during the summit.

"Like every year, Summit attendees can expect to walk away feeling enriched by spending two days among industry leaders and innovators who use the AQC as the platform to continue to develop a Quality culture across the drug development process," said Sundar.