Quintiles has struck a deal with the Scottish government, tapping four research centers in the country as "prime sites" in an effort to raise Scotland's profile in the clinical trial world.
Under the agreement, centers in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh will have first refusal on Scottish clinical trials run by Quintiles, also giving them access to the global CRO's services, Outsourcing-Pharma reports.
Quintiles tells the website that Scotland presents an attractive proposition to drug developers on the strength of the National Health Service and the country's bonds between government, academia and industry. Furthermore, Scotland lags behind much of Western Europe in overall health, so the focus on hosting clinical trials there will benefit both patients and industry, Quintiles said.
"Scotland has a significant burden of disease and a huge need to speed the development of new therapies that will help people live healthier lives," Lindy Jones, Quintiles' head of Integrated Site Services, said in a statement. "This partnership will further enhance our ability to recruit patients and investigators--two groups critical to an efficient and effective drug-development process."
Furthermore, Quintiles says it will tap Scotland's state-of-the-art electronic health records system to identify trial participants and develop informatics data to drive clinical decision-making.
- read the country's release
- check out the Outsourcing-Pharma report