Central Lab Market Dynamics and Outsourcing Performance

[ISR’s “Central Lab Market Dynamics and Outsourcing Performance” report surveyed 101 respondents with decision-making authority for central lab services.]

Expected growth of central lab service areas
Respondents indicated that the central lab services projected to see the most growth over the next three years are biomarkers and genomics . Specifically, “biomarkers from Phase IIb through commercialization” is expected to experience the largest rate of growth.

Regional distribution
Based on feedback from industry experts, ISR’s report asked several different types of questions surrounding the historic, current and future geographical mix of central lab activities.

From a macro point of view, the distribution of central lab testing shows a substantial drop in testing in North America and modest gains in emerging pharma regions. With that being said, respondents indicate that the majority of central lab tests (72%) will continue to be run in North America and Western Europe through 2015.

To dive a little deeper, ISR asked respondents to indicate which countries they had been using more of today as compared to two years ago and which countries they had been using less of two years ago compared to today. Results show that China has seen the largest increase in net usage (from 4% to 20%), while North America has experienced a slight decrease in net usage (28% to 27%). One important finding from these two
questions is that respondents are indicating they are performing central lab tests in more countries as the vast majority of countries are showing a net increase in usage.

Attributes sponsors use to select central lab providers
With over half of the respondents surveyed indicating that ALL of their central lab activities are outsourced, attributes sponsors use to select service providers are more important than ever.

In selecting a central lab service provider, respondents indicated that “Quality” (34%) is the single, most important attribute. When respondents were asked to select their top 5 most important attributes for selection, “Quality” (65%) was followed closely by “Sample turnaround time” (56%).