Why is q removing staff who really know drug development ?

He must have gone to the NH school of vendor management (give work to your pals, regardless of quality or cost)

 

Very well put. I would think TP and AM are bright enough to realize this deep down but they act as as if people are replaceable parts. Our culture is not what it one was. Welcome to Quincenture.

 

Industry (pharma/Biotech) comment - what you're seeing is that CROs across the board are not readily adapting to risk-based monitoring fast enough because the CRO wants to protect the traditional CRA model as it is very lucrative. Risk based monitoring has the long-term potential to be cheaper/less billable hours for the Sponsor company. What Pharma/Biotech companies are doing as a result is bringing some of that general CRA oversight back in-house while going with speciality SaaS technology vendors that strictly specialize in the systems that can provide a risk based monitoring framework and contractor FSPs (PRA or inVentiv) for office based staff to man those systems.

Also, companies are learning they are able to combine the CTS/CTA/CTC role with monitoring duties. Two jobs rolled into one. They're calling these in-house CRAs (very little travel). Ask anyone in Cambridge/MA and they'll tell you they're going with in-house CRAs now. They do mostly low-level CTA type work and travel 10-20% of the time. Why pay the CRO for their insistence on keeping the roles separate when you can combine the two with an FSP in-house and save a ton of money?

 

Keep dreaming. CROs are here to stay at least for the near term future.

 

US CRO jobs are disappearing more and more. Go ask your colleagues about their shadow Argentinians that they're working with now. 5 years ago, that did not exist. Now its all over. Only way the entice the work to stay inside, is to bring the costs and bill rates to such dirt cheap levels

Parexel did just that since late 2013-2015. They're ahead of the game. Don't believe go ask anyone you know that worked there fairly recently.

 

This is a great quote, regardless of the topic. The number of qualifiers added on to the end of the sentence makes me think that "at least for the near term" isn't actually the same as "here to stay". It's not even slightly the same.

 

Nothing is ever "here to stay". CROs will exist and continue to grow for the next decade. How's that? And yes, CROs will need to be smart and learn to leverage low cost options--as many companies across many industries must also do. That does not mean drug companies will pull everything back inside their companies.