Clinical Research – Light at the End of a Tough Year

It was a challenging year for the clinical research industry during 2009 as Clinical Research Organisations (CROs) and other medical trial sites faced numerous pharmaceutical firms merging, projects being cancelled and restrictions on study budgets. Some investigators even went bankrupt but there was hope that things would start to improve towards the latter part of the year as pharma and biotech companies began to revamp R&D.

Opportunities arose for companies that were able to capitalise on their global presence and move swiftly into emerging markets like China and Latin America. The top 12 international trading CROs owned about 50 percent of the outsourcing market. Acquisitions happened periodically in the eClinical industry meaning more prospects for key players in that industry.

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Medical Device Outsourcing

It has been estimated that the global outsourcing industry will be worth roughly 26 billion dollars by the year 2014, rising at a compound growth rate of approx 14% between 2009 and 2014. While the regulatory services being one of the fast growing areas in the industry, CROs have also seen a growing demand in a full spectrum of clinical services from monitoring, data management and study design to patient recruitment.

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Traditionally the regulatory haziness, up to 510 thousand approval delays and financial limitations faced by medical device firms meant numerous products were being tested in Europe before seeking approval for marketing in the USA, allowing these companies to save both money and time. This, however, may change soon as the new European Union medical device ruling comes into effect in March this year.

European Acquisition Ends 2009 with a Bang

In Spite of the worldwide economic slump, 2009 began on a positive note with a number of European contact research organisations or clinical research organisations (CROs) went into mergers or acquisitions with US companies and one global CRI made a large impact in Central and Eastern Europe. Just as it started to look as though European mergers for 2009 had come to a halt, the year ended with a much hype when Synexus merged with ClinPharm.

The Author is Passionate about: clinical research