Drug Industry's Rush to Outsource

India has now become the prime destination for drug companies looking to make a buck overseas with the plethora of brainpower and ability to save millions--maybe billions--of dollars for the company's research.

According to Business Week, "five Western companies have formed drug discovery partnerships with Jubilant, including Eli Lilly, Amgen, and Forest Laboratories. Lilly is also partnering with Piramal, as is Merck. Every month deals are signed with India's elite pharmaceutical companies. The goal is to take promising compounds discovered by the multinationals, run tests to weed out the weakest candidates, and develop some of the others into marketable drugs. Eventually the Indian partners also hope to rack up scientific breakthroughs that lead to entirely new medicines for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, or diabetes."

So can this work? With American businesses happy to cut jobs in the USA for cheaper labor East; will there be another hit on the American economy? Alternatively, the positive effects of using cheap labor could build up the pharmaceutical industry allowing businesses to save money and, perhaps, expand their Western workforce.

Your thoughts?

Technology and Clinical Trials

Wall Street Journal posted this interesting article about firms that conduct clinical trials and their use of technology. Apparently many firms, including contract research organizations, are still are not using electronic means for documentation, and instead much of the information is still being recorded using the simple pen and paper method. As stated, IDC ran a report that concluded that only 45% of phase I-III clinical trails conducted last year used EDC. That is up somewhat 69

in comparison to only 20% in 2003. It should be noted however that the number of firms using EDC is expected to increase to 80% by 2011. As quoted in this article, Bob Weiler, CEO of Phase forward remarked that:

Clinical trials have taken so long to go electronic because “if you go back two or three years, many doctors did not have broadband connections,”