Quintiles bolsters its consulting business

The contract research oragnisation (CRO) purchased Boston-based Eidetics for an undisclosed sum, reasoning that it would "strengthen its core consulting offerings in the areas of product development, commercialisation and market access​". For the past 20 years Eidetics has provided research-based market insights and data analytics to support business decision making in drug development and commercialisation and counts among its repeat clients 18 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. "The addition of Eidetics to our Quintiles Consulting business will further strengthen our ability to provide our clients with distinctive, data-driven, strategic solutions to their toughest challenges throughout the product lifecycle​," said Jay Norman, president of Quintiles Consulting. Compared to its other more core areas of the business, Quintiles' Consulting services unit is fairly new, and the firm has been building up the division to work with pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies to help them maximise potential and minimise risk from discovery through development and commercialisation, by providing expert strategic, operational and technical advice in three key areas: product development and commercialisation, regulatory and quality and market access. The company is competing with other giant rival CROs such as Parexel who also offer such consulting services to the industry, as the trend amongst CROs moves towards pushing added-value services such as these torwards clients in a bid to capture more markets share. With this in mind, Quintiles has been actively pushing for the expansion if its Consulting business of late, moving Norman into the presidential role in October last year in order to help facilitate this. Only last month the firm further reinforced its committment to the segment with the appointment of three new key staff menmbers. John Doyle was appointed practice leader, Market Access, in the US, where he will focus on market access strategy, health economic assessments, outcomes research, and pricing and reimbursement strategy and support. He will work with his European counterpart, Dr Jacco Keja of the Netherlands-based Market Access practice, "to build the business globally, as well as expand and deepen the group's service offerings​," said Quintiles. Doyle joined the firm from Analytica International, a health economics and market access consulting firm he co-founded and led as president. Meanwhile, Adrian McKemey was handed the role of practice leader, Product Development and Commercialisation, US, where he will focus on business transformation, portfolio management, risk partnering, scenario planning and outsourcing strategies. McKemey was most recently a Principal with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), working in the Health Care practice and the BCG Strategy Institute. Additionally, Jim Featherstone, was also hired as practice leader of Regulatory and Quality and Product Development and Commercialization, Europe. In this role, Featherstone is charged with grow this segment in Europe, as well as overseeing and expanding the existing regulatory and quality consulting services in Europe. He joined Quintiles from Wood Mackenzie, a prominent business intelligence and strategy consulting services company based in the UK, where he was the global head of Consulting for the Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology practice.