The Icon hub will help the company develop new technologies and clinical trial processes to enable faster access to clinical data and to help clinical trial personnel to derive better insights from the data. The 200 new jobs will be split roughly evenly between Dublin and Limerick and will take Icon’s total employment to 1200 in Ireland. The new roles will include roles in IT, data analytics, clinical science, project management, finance and human resources.
Steve Cutler, COO at Icon, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com that the new hub will help the company build on its relationship with the University of Dublin, which the company has “good relations” with in terms of hiring new graduates.
“This is not an operational site at all,” Cutler said, noting it will be purely dedicated to developing new tech, better data entry and creating faster, better and cheaper processes around clinical trials.
The project has been part-funded by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Enterprise Ireland.
PPD Moves
Icon’s move in Ireland comes a few days after rival PPD expanded its clinical supplies facility in Athlone, Ireland. The expansions are the result of PPD more than tripling the size of the facility as part of its long-term strategy to expand its global depot network.
The Ireland facility now features 20,000 square feet of space to support the company’s ability to store, package and label for the clinical trials PPD conducts for its clients.
Susan Atkinson, SVP of global biometrics at PPD, said: “Our ability to expand our support of clinical trials enables us to meet our clients’ growing demand for these services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This strategic location makes it operationally and financially efficient to ship supplies to any of those countries, often directly to investigative sites.”
The Athlone facility serves as PPD’s European hub for clinical supplies, and is one of five depots PPD maintains around the world. The other sites are located in China, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine.
The Athlone operation also can provide ancillary supplies, such as syringes, IV pumps and other machinery needed by investigative sites.
The expansions come days after PPD added cell-based assay services to its Irish operations in order to meet European demand.