Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT services, business solutions and outsourcing firm and Roche, a global research-focused health care group in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, have announced a partnership to advance Roche’s Global Capacity Building Initiative (GCBI). This new initiative will provide services to a number of areas in Roche’s development organization, including Clinical Data Management, Clinical Programming, Biostatistics and Drug Safety support. The collaboration between TCS and Roche is aimed to create a flexible, scalable and high-quality partnership to support the demands of Roche’s increasing drug pipeline. Jean-Jacques Garaud, global head of pharma development at Roche, commented: “The partnership with TCS will allow us to address the growing operational needs of our development organization and to handle the increasing workload.”

A recent Lehman Brothers survey reveals that Western pharma companies are still shying away from outsourcing preclinical work to Asia, with only 32 percent of those interviewed saying their companies were planning to outsource preclinical studies to the region. Meanwhile, Covance and Charles River clearly dominate this niche contract research organization (CRO) industry sector. Covance only just edged Charles River out of the top spot in the survey poll, with scores of 1.75 and 1.79 respectively, where a score of one indicated “excellent” and five signaled “unacceptable.” Of the global CROs, the survey placed WIL Research in the third spot, Huntingdon Life Sciences in the fourth, followed by MPI Research and SNBL, with scores of 2.50, 2.62, 3.00 and 3.00 respectively in a ranking of overall perceived quality of clinical research services.

invivodata, a leading patient diary firm, announced changes to its senior management team in response to significant growth in its global operations. The changes include the appointment of Wolfgang Summa as vice president of International and European managing director and the promotion of Bob Young to chief operating officer. Summa, formerly with DataTrak, will be responsible for sales and marketing, and managing successful execution of all invivodata studies conducted outside the Americas and Japan. Young will assume responsibility for invivodata’s global operations, will continue to be responsible for global sales, marketing and alliances, and will retain his position as president of PRO Consulting, invivodata’s scientific and regulatory consulting division.

Octagon Research Solutions, a clinical trial technology suite, announced that it has opened an office in Mountain View, California. The new office will be home to the company’s expanding EDC (electronic data capture) operations. CEO Jim Walker said: “The expansion to Mountain View signals continued growth for our organization from both a technology and a service perspective. Our vision of delivering solutions that span the clinical drug development process from data collection to submission is gaining momentum in the marketplace.”

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