With global pharma companies leveraging IT to cut costs, Indian technology firms such as TCS, Satyam, Patni and Cognizant are now stepping up presence in life science space.
?Increasing costs of R&D, coupled with low productivity and poor bottom lines, have forced major pharma companies worldwide to outsource part of their data management activities to low-cost countries, thereby saving costs and time in the process,? TCS Vice President and Global Head - Life Sciences and Healthcare ISU - Debashis Ghosh said.

Indian IT companies have been helping life sciences organisations with services ranging from application development, maintenance, testing and upgrade to global roll out and implementation, he added.

The country's largest software exporter TCS earns about 5.3 per cent of its revenue from the life science processes.

According to a research firm Life Science Insights (LSI), worldwide IT spending for the life science sector would reach 38.9 billion dollar by the end of 2008, driven by the need to tackle regulatory burdens and costly clinical trials, and by life sciences companies leveraging IT to enable personalized medicine.

?With data growth fast outpacing the growth in the infrastructure capabilities of life science companies, it has become a necessity to outsource key activities related to storing, accessing, securing, and managing of data.

?This, coupled with the regulatory compliance, is driving the IT intervention amongst the life science companies,? Cognizant Life Sciences Practice Leader J Sairamkumar said.

Pharmaceutical companies are expanding Post-Market Drug Safety Initiatives to prevent adverse reactions. This is because of heightened public awareness of drug safety, greater regulatory scrutiny, a number of recent drug withdrawals and black box warnings, industry experts said.

Out of the several processes, the adverse event case processing is becoming a fast growing service stream.

Adverse event reporting relates to tracking changes in health or side effects that occurs in a person who participates in a clinical trial while he is receiving treatment or within specified period.