Bristol/Accenture Launch Pharmacovigilance Center In India

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Accenture have established a center for pharmacovigilance as part of Accenture's Life Sciences Centers of Excellence in Chennai, India, Accenture announced Sept. 13.

The pharmacovigilance center is part of Bristol's expanded R&D capabilities in India, Bristol said. "We have research centers around the world" supported by pharmacovigilance activities, "and this would be yet another to support the work we're doing," the company told "The Pink Sheet" DAILY.

The Accenture Life Science Centers of Excellence are "world-renowned for operating under international standards for good clinical practice, so we're tapping into a talentbase and a knowledgebase that is there in India," Bristol said.

The pharmacovigilance center will be staffed by at least 140 Accenture employees, who will process and code adverse event data and generate regulatory, periodic and aggregate reports on safety, as well as provide medical review of reported adverse reactions, Accenture said.

On April 4, Accenture announced it had expanded an existing deal with Bristol to include a multi-year agreement for India-based clinical data and document management, pharmacovigilance and scientific writing, as well as support on information systems.

In March, Bristol announced that it had hired Syngene, a subsidiary of Bangalore, India-based Biocon that does custom research, to do discovery research work involving medicinal chemistry, biology and drug metabolism. At the time, Bristol also announced plans to enlist Accenture's support functions ("The Pink Sheet" DAILY, March 14, 2007). Bristol said Syngene is building a dedicated research facility housing 500 scientists to support the agreement.

-Shirley Haley

This article is reprinted from "The Pink Sheet" DAILY – Sept. 14, 2007

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