Although the firm declined to reveal the size of the deal, the figure being thrown around by industry sources is between $30–$35m (€23–€27m). As part of the deal, TCS will provide software for clinical trial data management as well as statistical analysis and medical writing to assist the pharma giant with regulatory review and will establish a new medical information sciences centre in Noida, exclusively for the purpose. The new centre will open with 100 staff including doctors, biochemists, software engineers and microbiologists and will be scaled up over a period of time, according to the firm. This is TCS's second and largest pharma outsourcing contract - in January the company scored a contract from Danish pharma firm Novo Nordisk for the data management of its clinical trials run in India. These services are being carried out from TCS's existing facility in Mumbai. Off-shoring or outsourcing parts of clinical trial management to cost-effective countries such as Asia and India is a trend that is becoming increasingly popular with pharma firms – according to analysts it can reap in savings of up to 40 per cent of the current cost of capturing data from clinical trials. As a result, the potential revenue from this growing industry sector is expected to reach around $1bn over the next five years, according to available estimates.
