Post-marketing Clinical Research Moving from tactical to strategic Sourcing

The partnerships between large Pharma and the CROs in the future for Post-marketing Clinical Research are more likely to be strategic rather than tactical in nature. Large global CROs are expected to be preferred partners for this type of engagement. The white paper will discuss what is driving such change in the engagement in the future. The paper will highlight 4 prominent tends that are responsible for the market dynamics leading to consolidation of the vendors and change in the level of engagement of the Pharma with the vendors. Pharma clients should have a strategy in place even for all niche services in the late phase clinical development. As Large CROs scale up their capabilities, either by M&A or organic expansion to meet the specific requirements of the Pharma, the latter will have to consider a strategy in place to procure cost-effective and quality solutions for the late phase clinical category. Engagement of the Pharma with the vendors, although strategic for most of the sourcing categories, has not much seen consolidation of vendors to one or two for the Post-marketing Clinical Research services. As the demand for Post-marketing Clinical Research data grew and the level of sub-services became more complex, clients have to decide to select best-fit vendors with no compromise in quality. This also resulted in increase in different types of vendors such as large global CRO, specialist CRO, consulting companies, etc. offering partial or full coverage of the late phase clinical development services. As the market saw more integration of the Post-marketing Clinical Research services such as health economics, epidemiology, market access, in the early phases, the big CROs have made many attempts to upscale their late phase offerings to grab a larger share of the market as compared to the specialist late phase CROs that are an obvious choice for a Pharma company in this regard. Thus arises a need to understand the partnerships of the CROs and the Pharma are more likely to be strategic in nature in the coming years, with a win-win for both. While the client would benefit in terms of cost, geographical reach, experience and scalability from the CROs, the latter have to offer more quality in the specific and niche services of the late phase to fulfill the needs of the client.