growth globally. With increasing research and development, clinical trials, and regulatory requirements, life sciences companies have started relying more on outsourcing non-core functions to specialty Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms. Let’s examine more on how the life sciences BPO industry has evolved and the opportunities it presents.
Emergence of the Life Sciences BPO Sector
Beginning in the early 2000s, a few niche BPO providers started offering services focused on the life sciences domain. These included areas like clinical data management, medical transcription, and regulatory information management. As life sciences companies looked to streamline operations and reduce costs, the potential of outsourcing specific business functions was realized. More life sciences specialists emerged who could offer deep therapeutic and compliance expertise alongside technology-enabled solutions. By the late 2000s, life sciences BPO clearly established itself as a distinct outsourcing sector supporting drug discovery, clinical research, and commercialization activities.
Growth in Key Outsourced Services
The life sciences BPO industry has witness rapid expansion in services outsourced by pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies. Some of the major services that saw growth include:
Clinical Data Management: With increasing clinical trial complexity, most sponsors rely on CROs and specialized BPOs to plan, capture, clean, and report study data on their behalf. This is now a multibillion-dollar market.
Medical Transcription: Healthcare providers and insurers outsource the transcription of medical records, including notes, discharge summaries, lab results etc. to companies offering high accuracy.
Regulatory Information Management: Maintaining compliant global product registrations and filing documentation for new approvals is a crucial but resource-intensive task outsourced to regulatory specialists.
Commercial Operations: As life sciences companies look to maximize their salesforce performance, functions like marketing collateral development, contact center support, reimbursement management are increasingly outsourced.
Centralized Service Centers: Leading BPOs now operate captively-run service centers largely in low-cost locations supporting various global clinical and commercial programs through centralized teams.
Consolidation and Maturation of the Industry
The success of early life sciences BPO providers established the viability of the sector. This also led to consolidation as larger BPO firms made strategic acquisitions to bolster their domain expertise and service portfolio. At the same time, new dedicated BPO players emerged with a focus on next-gen technologies and therapy-specific capabilities. The life sciences BPO industry has now matured into a set of specialized providers offering end-to-end solutions across the entire product lifecycle.
Continued Outsourcing and Innovation
The life sciences manufacturing and R&D scene continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Emerging treatment modalities like cell and gene therapy, immunology and precision medicines bring newer complexities. At the same time, regulatory oversight is increasing globally with higher data submission standards. This is leading to further outsourcing trends as life sciences firms focus on their core. Leading BPOs are also investing in technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and cloud platforms to power the next wave of innovations across clinical development, manufacturing and commercial operations. The future looks promising for the growing life sciences BPO sector.
In Conclusion
Over the past 20 years, the life sciences BPO industry has grown tremendously – both in scale as well as maturity. With dedicated expertise across areas critical for life sciences product development and commercialization, these BPO providers have now become important strategic partners. As the industry embraces newer technologies in data science, cloud and digital platforms, outsourcing is expected to play an even more vital role going forward. This will help drive efficiency for life sciences firms as they work towards developing innovative treatments for patients around the world.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
