While Singapore’s position as an Asian drug manufacturing hub is well established thanks to decades of infrastructure investment, the country’s contract research sector is still relatively under developed.
Part of the reason for this, according to senior parliamentary secretary for manpower and health Hawazi Daipi explained, is the fact that Singapore only has a pool of around 400 trained clinical staff.
Despite this around 130 new clinical research development projects have started this year which, when added to the 500 or so on-going studies, means demand for qualified researchers exceeds supply, creating the need for the new training programmes.
The clinical research co-ordinators course will focus on patient recruitment and screening skills, coupled with medical record retrieval and electronic data entry skills.
In contrast, the clinical research associates (CRA) programmes is designed to cover everything from research methodology and ethics to good clinical practice (GCP), data collection and trial site selection.
The two courses, which were developed by Nanyang Polytechnic and the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), will begin in October this year with the aim of attracting 150 new entrants.
Clinical research consortium
In addition to the two training programmes the Singaporean government will also establish a clinical research consortium to monitor trend’s in the country’s contract research sector to ensure that the training programmes a relevant to industry needs.
The consortium, explained Daipi, will work with the Health Research Staff Career and Development taskforce to “identify training gaps, set training standards that reflect industry best practices and provide advice on suitable training programmes.”