Parexel Enhances Study Start-Up and Recruitment Capabilities With New Appointment

BOSTON, June 11-PAREXEL International Corporation, a leading global biopharmaceutical services provider, has appointed Lars-Olof Eriksson, Ph.D., MS.c., to the position of Vice President of its Start-up and Accelerated Recruitment Team (START). Formerly a Senior Director in Clinical Research Operations specializing in patient recruitment at Merck & Co., Inc., Dr. Eriksson leads a global team of PAREXEL experts in providing a strategic, comprehensive approach to accelerate study initiation and achieve last patient in (LPI) milestones for regional and international clinical trials conducted by PAREXEL for its clients.
 
"Approximately 45% of study delays are due to patient recruitment and enrollment issues. To help biopharmaceutical companies overcome these costly delays, PAREXEL has expanded our study start-up and recruitment capabilities under the leadership of Dr. Eriksson," said Mark A. Goldberg, M.D., Chief Operating Officer, PAREXEL. "As the number, size, and complexity of trials increase, we expect our clients to benefit significantly from the additional depth of Dr. Eriksson's expertise in achieving faster timelines and superior clinical program performance."
 
"It is critical that biopharmaceutical companies take a strategic approach to their clinical development plans, including placing greater focus on study design and feasibility assessments in order to generate the most success at the recruitment and retention phases of a study," said Dr. Eriksson. "Working with clients, our dedicated experts apply a proactive method to study-start up and recruitment, which includes identification of high performance investigators and sites, access to diverse patient populations, and use of proprietary recruitment tools, data assets, and processes as well as implementation of sophisticated contingency-based escalation strategies."
 
Dr. Eriksson has more than 30 years of experience in patient recruitment, site implementation, project management, and global drug development. He has extensive expertise in implementing programs across Europe, North America, and Latin America. Prior to his previous position in Clinical Research Operations, Dr. Eriksson had responsibility for worldwide site implementation at Merck. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey in the School of Health Related Professions. Dr. Eriksson is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has authored several publications on the topics of patient recruitment, site performance, and drug development.
 
PAREXEL's study start-up and recruitment experts actively manage the study start-up process against accurate baselines and projections to improve patient outreach and site management capabilities to support LPI goals. The team is focused on ensuring clinical trials begin on time and are effectively managed from start to finish. For more information about PAREXEL's study-start up and recruitment capabilities visit: http://www.PAREXEL.com/clinical_research/patient_recruitment.html