The multi-million dollar outsourced clinical trial business in India is going through a rough patch, as the Contract Research Organisations (CROs) are facing difficulties in recruitment of patients and retaining them for the entire period of trial.      

With the expected outsourcing up to $ 1 bn investment in multi-centric trials in India by 2011, experts said during the international conference on 'Patient recruitment and Retention in clinical Trials' that India has to make efforts to create awareness among the public about the cost-benefit ratio of these trials to have affordable medicines in the near future.     

The large volume of people makes China and India excellent places conducting clinical trial in Asia but between India and China, India seemed to have an edge as the clinical research, as data management here are well placed, President and CEO of D Anderson & Co Dr Nancy Anderson said.     

The twenty year old US company D Anderson has joined recently with Clinical Research Education and Management Academy (CREMA) India and are focusing on patient recruitment as per the international and ICMR guidelines, she told .    

"Earlier, we used to recruit patients and retain them till the trial is over but currently the number seemed dwindling. Therefore, in this conference, we are planning a strategised approach,"she said.   

Recruiting patients and retaining them through trials is a tough exercise especially in the case of multi-centric trials in children as it requires informed parents 'consent and follow up, child specialist and former professor of Grand Medical college Yashwant Krishna Amdekar said.

Source: Business Standard