TCS wins $35 million Eli Lilly contract
The Economic Times — November 13, 2006

Indian software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has landed a large pharma BPO contract from Eli Lilly to provide drug development services, including clinical trial data management, statistical analysis and medical writing, to the global pharma major. Industry sources estimate that the multi-year contract is in the range of $30-35m, although TCS refused to disclose the size. This is TCS' second pharma outsourcing contract and, so far, its largest in this space.

When contacted, J Rajagopal, global head, life sciences and healthcare practice at TCS, confirmed that the company had bagged the contract and said it would establish an exclusive medical information sciences centre in Noida as part of the agreement, which spans all areas of therapeutics. "The order will cover all aspects of clinical trial data management, including data clearing, checking and data mining. Other services we will provide are biostatistical analysis and medical writing which involve taking the data and converting it into information for regulatory review," he said.

The medical information sciences centre at Noida is starting with 100 professionals ranging from doctors, biochemists, software engineers to microbiologists. The centre will be scaled up over a period of time. As per McKinsey estimates, the size of the market for offshore clinical operations is $600m. The total research and development (R&D) spend by top 40 pharma companies is pegged at $52b.

"India is in a favourable position to grab the offshorable pie, given the availability of highly skilled manpower, fluency in english language, favourable regulatory environment and strong emphasis on quality improvement. More and more pharma companies are now looking to India for such services," he said, adding India also had an edge in terms of cost savings, scalability and faster response time. At present, most of the clinical trial services are being offered by Clinical Research Organisations (CROs).

Last year, TCS had bagged a clinical trial data management contract from pharmaceutical major Novo Nordisk. The size of the contract from Novo Nordisk was 75 per cent the size of the current order, say industry observers. As part of the arrangement with Novo Nordisk, TCS conducts offshore clinical operation services for the company in India and offers data management services.