Outsourcing has potential for pharmacovigilance market, says Frost & Sullivan

The world pharmacovigilance market is expected to be worth US$2.25bn by 2015, rising from US$1.86bn in 2008, according to Frost & Sullivan.

The boost in the purchase of drug safety database and signal detection systems by pharmaceutical companies will be driven by the intensification of safety regulations by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), says F&S in its World Pharmacovigilance Markets in Lifesciences report.

"The need to operate in a cost-effective way is inducing pharmaceutical companies to outsource/offshore their pharmacovigilance operations," says Frost & Sullivan senior analyst E Sujith.

For large companies, the volume of adverse events is sizeable. Even a product from a mid-size company can generate a high volume of adverse events, which means there is also significant potential for outsourcing/offshoring for these businesses.

Most top pharmaceutical companies have well-established systems and processes in place, says F&S, but they are unwilling to replace them as it would be costly and time-consuming. The migration of data from one system to another also tends to be expensive and difficult.

F&S suggests vendors educate pharma companies about technology and its importance in their day-to-day operations to overcome scepticism about new technology and its merits.

"There will be advances in data integration that will support more flexible decisionmaking on drug safety issues," says Sujith. "There is significant scope to extend pharmacovigilance systems to boost their integration with a range of other data sources such as medical records and clinical data."