MUMBAI: It's the global mantra - quicker timelines for drug delivery, better drugs at better costs. Keen to battle healthcare costs, traditional pharmaceutical industry is revisiting its value chain to optimise efficiencies. Enter outsourcing, which is being effectively used to leverage risk and accelerate drug development at optimal cost.
winston churchill on muslimsSir Winston Churchill: Appeasement is like feeding a crocodile hoping he will eat you last. Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans...
Triggered by a cascade of challenges, the pharmaceutical industry is under pressure to identify methods to grow their product pipelines in order to reach revenue demands. "More than ever, pharma firms are partnering with specialist firms to compress the timeline for drug development, thereby decreasing their commercialisation cost," says S Dedhia, at Frost and Sullivan.
Pharma majors Bristol Myers Squibb has outsourced its oncology work to a third party in India, as has GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Aventis and Schering AG. The firms, in question, refused to divulge the names of their Indian counterparts.
Pfizer is said to be tapping an Indian firm for broadbased screening of molecules and Novo Nordisk is looking at identifying drug delivery techniques by outsourcing to India.
As a GSK official pointed out: "Many pharma giants are making India their regional hub for clinical trials and research. Pressure from governments to cut drug prices are also ensuring that multinationals look at outsourcing production and select stages of research to India."
Pegged at a staggering $33 billion and growing at 10%, the outsourcing services market has exhibited a consistent double-digit growth for the past five years. A recent study by international consultant A T Kearney has corroborated that pharma outsourcing is set to be the next big boom in India. The wide gap in salaries between the West and India is turning out to be the main trigger.
Kotak Securities, in its report, has maintained that India has all the key ingredients like "technical skills, regulatory compliance, cost advantage and global relationships, to emerge as a powerhouse in this space." Kotak estimates that the global outsourcing opportunity in pharmaceuticals, which was at $24 billion in 2002 will rise to $48 billion by 2007.
muslims condem killing innocent people.... 3338Yawn...... If you're a Christian perhaps you should learn something about your religion before you speak. Most of the Taliban style Christians that hate other religions are in denial, I think you've just proven...
An analysis by Frost and Sullivan (F&S) has noted that while the world market for basic research services is $3.96 billion growing at 22.7% year on year, over the past five years, therapeutic area-based services have managed to acquire an edge in the revenue contribution. With the advent of genomics, proteomics and other technologies, the scales are most like to tip in favour of technology platforms.
Moreover, with generic players challenging patents and thereby the exclusive marketing tenures of newer molecules, the second tier companies are taking on where the big daddies have left off - therapy area-based outsourcing with oncology being the unchallenged area.
