Ventiv partners with Indian CRO

Through the joint venture, >Ventiv​ aims to capitalise on India's budding clinical research industry and compete with other leading CROs like Quintiles, who have already set up extensive operations in India.

According to a recent report, India's clinical research industry is currently valued at $100 million (€83 million) and is almost doubling each year, reflecting the shifting focus of the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry to Asia.

Companies like Pfizer, Lilly, AstraZeneca, Bausch & Lomb and others are already leveraging the Indian clinical research industry for conducting trials as well as data management.

India's increasing attractiveness as a clinical research base is compelling for many reasons, including its large treatment-naive patient population, large pool of English-speaking scientific and healthcare personnel, and significantly lower costs of conducting trials.

"The challenge for drug makers to optimise quality, time and resources across their numerous clinical studies has never been greater,"​ said Dr Dilip Mehta, senior advisor to Ventiv-SIRO and the former head of US clinical research for Pfizer.

"From my experience, I've seen how India is playing an increasingly important role in keeping pharmaceutical research costs down while utilizing the country's top-tier talent,"​ he said.

The Ventiv->SIRO​ partnership brings together Ventiv's broad statistical analysis and data management services and client portfolio, with SIRO's experience in conducting large-scale Phase II-IV clinical trial data management projects in India, and will provide pharma and biotech companies access to a broad pool of outsourced offshore talent who will design databases, conduct data and statistical analysis and analyse medical images and scans at a lower overall cost.

"The Ventiv-SIRO joint venture brings together two highly-experienced organizations that can support the clinical data management needs and enhance the productivity of pharmaceutical company R&D programs,"​ said Mehta.