BANGALORE: India is emerging as an attractive destination for conducting clinical trials owing to its vast pool of trained medical professionals and despite the debate about ethics.

According to Naveen Rao, Medical Director of MSD Pharmaceuticals, the medical infrastructure in the country makes ideal for conducting trials. Dr. Rao and other member of pharmaceutical and contract research organisations attended Bangalore Bio 2006 here.

Mahesh Sawant of Healthcare Practice, Frost and Sullivan, a market research company, said that besides state-of-the-art hospitals, the country's strength included its English-speaking professionals. "There are nearly 7,00,000 hospital beds and 221 medical colleges in India," he added.

Rising costs

Dr. Rao said rising costs and pressure on pharmaceutical companies to bring drugs to the marker sooner made pharmaceutical majors extend clinical trials to other countries.

Quoting from results of a study in 2005, Dr. Rao said 43 per cent of CROs said they outsourced at least 10 per cent of their work.

Cost savings on trials outsourced to India was between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. Trials are going on in areas such as psychiatry, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, dermatology and ophthalmology.

Mr. Sawant said the market was expected to grow rapidly in 10 years.

The clinical research services market in the country was likely to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 27.4 per cent compared with the global figure of 13 per cent.

The clinical research outsourcing market in the country was valued at over Rs. 300 crore in 2005, he added.

A study by the Confederation of India Industry has predicted that the clinical trials market will be worth $200 million by 2007 and between $ 500 million and $1 billion by 2010.

Awareness

Nermeen Varawala, Vice President (Business Development), PRA International, U.K, said increased awareness of good clinical practices and improved clinical-trial training had brought about a favourable change in attitude towards outsourcing to India. However, she said the issue of ethical standards continue to be an area of concern for CROs. "India needs to address the issue. The good thing is that they appear to be committed to upholding high ethical standards," she added.

Narges Mahaluxmivala, President (Clinical Services and Commercialisation), Quintiles India, said a licensing system should be introduced in hospitals carrying out clinical trials.

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