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Sleep News Blog

Prescription Sleep Medicine

A Tough Year For the Clinical Trial Industry

Posted by sleepyguy in Prescription Sleep Medicine on May 16th, 2010

The clinical trial industry faced a difficult year during 2009 as CROs and trial centres competed against a number of pharmaceutical mergers, budget restrictions and budget cancellations. Some even went out of business but there was a light in the midst of the dark tunnel with the anticipation that things would pick up later in the year as pharma companies rejuvenated ongoing R&D activities.

Opportunities arose for companies that were able to capitalise on their global presence and move swiftly into emerging markets like China and Latin America. The top 12 international trading CROs owned about 50 percent of the outsourcing market. Acquisitions happened periodically in the eClinical industry meaning more prospects for key players in that industry.

Outsourcing for Medical Devices Grows as U.S. and EU Regulations Become Stricter

It is anticipated that the global medical device outsourcing industry will be worth $26,7 billion dollars by 2014, increasing at a compound growth rate of 13.9 percent from the year 2009 to 2014. Where the regulatory services area is growing fast, CROs have seen a rising demand for a broad array of clinical services, including data management, monitoring, patient recruitment and study design.

In the past, due to regulatory ambiguity, up to 510,000 delays in the approval and financial restrictions faced by medical device companies meant that many products were first tested in Europe before marketing approval was sought in the US, saving both time and money. However, this approach may change as the new EU medical device decree comes into effect in March 2010.

European Acquisition Ends 2009 successfully

In Spite of the worldwide economic slump, 2009 began on a positive note with a number of European contact research organisations or clinical research organisations (CROs) went into mergers or acquisitions with US companies and one global CRI made a large impact in Central and Eastern Europe. Just as it started to look as though European mergers for 2009 had come to a halt, the year ended with a much hype when Synexus merged with ClinPharm.