As part of the acquisition, Welocalize will gain access to GLS’s network of more than 2,500 specialized life science and healthcare linguists, growing the company’s multinational client portfolio and language services in life sciences, legal, regulatory and compliance, government, and healthcare.
“Welocalize continues to expand into life sciences to offer greater specialization for this industry vertical and across the entire continuum business needs for language solutions,” Smith Yewell, CEO at Welocalize told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
As Outsourcing-Pharma.com previously reported, several companies are expanding offerings to remote areas of the world, as clinical trials become increasingly more complex. According to ClinicalTrials.gov, there are nearly 12,000 active trials running in 72 African and Middle Eastern counties, including Egypt, Israel, Uganda, Jordan, and Kenya.
“There are unique requirements in supporting healthcare, biotech, pharma and medical devices when it comes to language solutions. Expertise and experience are critical,” added Yewell.
Earlier this year Welocalize acquired Nova, making GLS the company's third major acquisition.
“Welocalize is now in a position to be one of the most experienced and specialized providers for this industry across all language service providers,” added Yewell.
Erin Wynn, Chief Customer Officer at Welocalize told us it is critical that the company’s clients depend on its life science brands “to support the entire language process in all languages for clinical trials, from patient recruitment to linguistic validation for patient-reported outcomes (PROs).”
“There is no doubt that global clinical trials continue to shift to emerging markets in order to reduce costs, increase diversity in the trial and meet the short market timing requirements,” she added. “The linguistic validation processes that we provide helps trial organizers to study data across the entire ‘global’ clinical trial experience.”
With its acquisition of GLS, the company’s focus on legal and life sciences currently accounts for nearly 35% of all its business.
“It is core to Welocalize and is an area we will continue to invest in to meet the unique requirements of this vertical, in innovation, quality and customer service,” said Wynn.