Quintiles turns high-end BPO service provider

The centralised ECG lab in India is one of half a dozen in the world

Quintiles, the $1.8 billion professional and infrastructure service provider to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, has seen "enormous growth" in India in the last 18 months, says Ferzaan Engineer, chief executive officer in India.

What is distinctive is that the company, whose core business remains conducting clinical trials for drug discovery firms, has seen its ECG work in India grow so rapidly that it is now more of a high-end BPO company than a contract research one.

Of a total Indian staff strength of a little over 800, the ECG work accounts for 100.

"In ECG, we will continue to add people as we are now an approved and qualified vendor. It takes 9-18 months to get entrenched with customers and we see big work coming. Earlier a visiting prospective client would want to see our facilities. Now very quickly they sit down and start discussing how much work we can handle," adds Engineer.

Such is the growth in the ECG work that Quintiles is planning to open a second lab (the first and current one is in Mumbai) for the purpose in Bangalore early next year. In two years, the ECG staff strength can jump to 250-300.

In Quintiles' centralised global ECG lab in Mumbai technicians to cardiology specialist read, interpret and write reports on ECGs sent from round the world where clinical trials are underway, either by Quintiles or its customers to whom it offers the ECG facility.

The turnaround time, between an ECG sent to India and the report going out is 24-72 hours.

One of the key ways in which patients participating in clinical trials of candidate drugs are monitored is through ECGs, and these are getting more and more high tech.

The US regulator FDA is raising the standards for recording, reading and submitting ECG data and Quintiles' India lab is able to offer very good value for money to its clients by offering the service, which is a part of its overall menu.

Says Jogin Desai, executive director of QECG Services, "the FDA is currently asking for ECGs which record changes over a period of 6-20 milliseconds, whereas in current paper printouts the smallest square is 40 milliseconds."

The Indian capability lies in providing "an intensive service whose flow, however waxes and wanes. We need talent but also economic flexibility. It takes 8-10 weeks to train a person to read an ECG so you need a buffer of 10-15 per cent strength. The flexibility lies in being able upscale for long periods," adds Desai.

All the ECG reports Quintiles generates all over the world get centralised and read in Mumbai. There are half a dozen central facilities of such scale (i.e. handle a trial of 30,000 ECGs) in the world, with only one other being located outside of the US (in Belgium).

Quintiles cardiologists do six ECGs an hour, whereas in the west they do 25 an hour. "They are thereby able to give much less data to clients as it is a first level report essentially by a technician. Here we do much more value add, give cardiac safety solutions, which is done in a medical, not mechanical way. Thus we can add value and still be cost effective," adds Desai.

There are 11 FACC (Fellow of American College of Cardiology) equivalent cardiologists, who are led by Dr Yash Lokhandwala.

The Quintiles facility, because of its size and levels of expertise, offers career opportunities for MBBS entrants who can over time graduate from being cardiology associates to medical report writers and then project or operations managers.

Quintiles' other businesses in India include drug marketing, which is conventional, data management, which a long term core area (CEO Dennis Gillins founded Quintiles in 1982 to provide statistical consulting and data management services to the pharma industry) and software product development, which is the newest.

"We are working with a product which will be an aid to better, faster clinical trials. You could describe it as an e-clinical tool useful in the early part of a trial," explains Engineer.