Pharmaceutical Outsourcing - Outsourcing Drugs, Health and Healthcare

« Sucess Mantra of a Virtual Assistant | Main

Pharmaceutical Outsourcing - Outsourcing Drugs, Health and Healthcare

By Admin | February 10, 2009 -->1,325 views

Over the last decade outsourcing has become an important strategic issue for business firms in developed countries. This phenomenon has helped growing economies like India because majority of the outsourcing firms find it as a preferred destination. The Global Delivery Index, by IDC reports that Bangalore is the most favoured location, followed by New Delhi - mainly because of its skilled workforce. Although the IT outsourcing is expected to grow at the rate of 28% a year, India is facing tough competition from other countries especially China - because of cheaper labour. With the new wave in global outsourcing, India has come into the limelight again with the advent of Pharmaceutical Outsourcing.

Pharmaceutical industry in United States and other European nations is facing major challenges from generic drugs, higher overall cost for research and development, manufacturing and packaging. The industry considers outsourcing as a business strategy that would help to cut costs dramatically and to add a higher return on investments. Anything from drug research to marketing the product can be outsourced.

Pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Akorn have started to outsource manufacturing, packaging and drug research to India. The CEO and president of Akorn, Arthur Przybyl, announced that an agreement was signed with Cipla to develop, manufacture and supply an inhalation drug product. Merck, on the other hand, are looking out for collaborative research projects in India. They have recently started partnerships with Indian Institute of Science, Chandigarh National Centre for Biological sciences and NIPER for co-development of projects.

According to Frost & Sullivan’s Senior Research Analyst, Swati Chaturvedi, it takes 20 years and $800 million for a new drug to enter the market. It is estimated that nearly 70 percent of this amount is accounted to pre-clinical and clinical research. Pre-clinical studies are either done in laboratory or as trials on animals to estimate a safe starting dose of drugs before clinical testing in humans. Clinical research requires clinical trials – which includes recruitment of patients and healthy volunteers for testing. The Indian pharmaceutical industry is rapidly expanding and India is perfectly placed to undertake clinical trials. The major reason is because India is the second largest population in the world and has diverse ethnic groups.

In addition to this, the other emerging areas of pharmaceutical outsourcing include biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology consulting. Biopharmaceuticals - a relatively new term in Pharmaceutical industry - are medical drugs, usually large molecules of proteins or nucleic acids (like DNA or RNA), which can be produced using biotechnology. Biotechnology or biotech has become a generic term to refer any technology that uses living organisms or any biological system. Unlike the traditional pharmaceutical drugs which are found through trial and error to treat any disease, the biotech pharmaceutical products are custom made to treat the underlying cause of any disease. Outsourcing biotech consulting helps the biotech drugs manufacturers to gain specialized technological advice and expertise from any part of the world. Although outsourcing biopharmaceuticals and biotech consulting is a challenge, India is favoured by the fact that it has the largest number of US-FDA (Food and Drug Administration under USA) approved drug manufacturing facilities outside the United States.

In order to decrease the overall time consumed in testing a drug, computer simulations can be used to study their effects. This method is employed by firms like Virtual Drug Development Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Insymbiosis to provide pre-clinical and clinical drug discovery and development. Alan Smith – from Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh - has stated, in The International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, that internet will help to resolve the issues regarding clinical trial process by identifying patients in a timely manner. E-recruitment takes advantage of the power of internet to identify qualified candidates and provides more efficient and cost-effective means of conducting clinical trials. This new trend has resulted in the birth of Non profit drug development organizations. Amyris Biotech and One World Health have already setup web portals to facilitate internet based drug development.

The pharmaceutical firms looking for raw materials and research may not be the only players entering the outsourcing market - you could even outsource heart, eyes and bones. It might be surprising, but the fact remains that Medical Tourism is a fast growing concept that is being utilized by many tourism providers in North America and Europe. Medical tourism means outsourcing patients seeking all forms of medical and health care needs to nations that offer high quality health facilities at very low rates.

According to a Census Bureau study, a startling 46 million Americans - 15 percent of the total population - lacked health insurance. This means that an unexpected illness or accident will make these people bankrupt. In England, though the National Health Service takes of their health, the long wait in the queue forces many to seek outside for health care. India is emerging as the most sought out destination for Medical Tourism. The reason behind this is the availability of ‘state-of-the-art’ hospitals, highly educated and qualified doctors, highly skilled nurses trained in various part of the world, post-operative care. Many hospitals in India receive their patients at the airport, drive them to the hospital and ensure their stay in five-star hotels. These are part of the care that the patients get for the Medical Tourism package.

Howard Staab, a carpenter contractor from Orange County, has described about the facilities offered by Escorts Hospitals, New Delhi, and the care he got after the successful surgery. In his book, State of the Heart: A Medical Tourist’s True Story of Lifesaving Surgery in India, he mentions the total cost of his surgery and stay as $6700 – an affordable rate compared to the $200,000 estimated by Durham Regional Hospital in United States.

MediTravels, located in Missouri, has tied up with Apollo Hospitals and MIOT Hospital to provide Medical Tourism packages to their customers. Medical Tourism India has a list of affiliated hospitals in their website. In addition to the essential health care needs, a number of hotels and hospitals in Kerala promote traditional Ayurvedic therapies focusing leisure-based medical tourism.

In short, Pharmaceutical Outsourcing and Medical Tourism are aspects of the new wave in outsourcing and it has just started!

Bookmark It