Clinical research has opened up new vistas of employment

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: India is a young country, and with the economy opening up, students have much more options as far as education and job avenues are concerned. Many students, therefore, look to study newer courses that are offered in various institutes and niche avenues to engage themselves in. Clinical research is one such area. It is a systematic study of new drugs in human subjects to generate data for discovering or verifying the clinical and pharmacological effects or adverse effects with the objective of determining the safety and efficacy of the new drug.

The clinical research industry has grown around the world at an unparalleled rate in the past few years. It has opened up new vistas of employment for a large number of people. The clinical trials market worldwide is worth over $45 billion and the industry has employed an estimated 2,10,000 people in the US and over 70,000 people in the UK and they form one third of the total research and development staff, in the industry.

India is increasingly becoming the hub of clinical trials for all major pharma companies across the world due to its advantages of treatment, patient population, state-of-the-art and yet cost-effective trial sites, high percentage of English-speaking medical professionals and timely completion of projects.

Clinical research organisations (CRO) are multiplying by the dozen and pharmaceutical companies also see that more numbers of outsourced trials are successful compared to in-house trials.

Analysts are projecting that total clinical research spending in India will increase by more than 30% annually through 2010. There will be a huge demand for qualified and trained clinical research professionals.

Also, along with the demand, there are great career prospects for clinical research professionals in various site management offices (SMOs-where clinical trials are conducted), CROs and pharmaceutical companies.

If India were to take advantage of this boom, the country would require at least 50,000 clinical research professionals by 2010. They will also be in demand abroad. There are more than 2,50,000 positions vacant worldwide with salaries for a clinical research coordinator in the US starting at $40,000 per annum and $1,00,000 for a business development manager.

According to a McKinsey report, there will be a requirement of 50,000 clinical research professionals by 2010. As against this, there are a little more than 20,000 professionals available and each year, about 800 students pass out of clinical research institutes in the country.

To counter this increasing demand of clinical research professionals in the industry, we require more institutes for clinical research. Institutes like ICRI, are catering to this demand of trained professionals in collaboration with Cranfield University UK.

Also, there are a few other institutes like Bilcare Institute of Clinical Research, RNIS College of Clinical Research and Allied Sciences, New Delhi, Clinical Research Education and Management Academy (CREMA), Veeda Institute of Clinical Research, amongst other players that are coming up in the country.

“To set up such an institute that can accommodate 100 students, it would cost Rs 10 crore to Rs 12 crore,” says AK Nair, COO, Institute of Clinical Research, India.

The courses offered by the clinical research institutes can be done after graduation and gives students an opportunity to look forward to a bright career in pharmaceutical companies (like Zydus, Cadila, DRL, Ranbaxy, NPIL, Biocon etc), and at levels such as chief executive officer; clinical research organisation & site management office; head, clinical trial administrator; head, clinical trial operations; head, business development manager, site operations; head, senior clinical trial manager, clinical trial specialists in audits and head, project manager. The annual salaries range in this field from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 6 lakh plus.

However, the need for well-trained, skilled manpower to feed the need in the market today is important. Interaction between employers and college, university educators is critical to coordinate appropriate preparation of students for the clinical research workforce and the integration of technological developments. The advances in clinical research that are generated in industry must be transferred effectively to college and university classrooms, and faculty and student skill development must keep pace for appropriate workforce preparation to occur. Exploring and perhaps, improving the industry-academia connection in workforce and education may lead to developing and implementing more successful strategies for developing high-quality, industry-relevant human resource pool.

“Public-private partnerships should be pursued more vigorously if the benefits of the clinical research sector in India are to reach and benefit the global clinical research market. Indian companies are playing an important role in early drug discovery processes due to their substantial experience in the field of generic drugs with India becoming an established venue for chemistry and drug discovery developments rather than China,” says Nair.