Brad Michel, a managing director of Accenture’s Life Sciences practice and lead for Accenture Scientific Informatics Services, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com the acquisition expands Accenture’s life science informatics capabilities and strengthens its laboratory and R&D services range.
Sugar Land, TX-based LabAnswer is an informatics consultancy with approximtely 250 employees.
“By combining LabAnswer’s domain expertise with Accenture’s consulting depth, industry platforms, and innovation capabilities, we will be able to offer new and differentiated solutions and services to the market that neither company could deliver on their own,” Michel said.
Following the transaction, terms of which were not disclosed, LabAnswer will be combined with Accenture’s life sciences practice to form Accenture Scientific Informatics Services.
The service will leverage digital technologies, such as automation, artificial intelligence, and analytics, to capture, manage, integrate, and analyze data.
“Enabling researchers with advanced technologies and improved workflows, in combination with an explosion of new and diverse data types, promises to provide new insights into human biology and lead to the identification of new and more effective treatments for patients,” Michel explained.
“While we see significant opportunities across many industries, as well as across R&D and manufacturing spaces, we see tremendous opportunity in the life sciences discovery and research space in particular,” he added.
As for future M&A activity, Kevin Julian, managing director of Accenture’s Life Sciences practice in North America, told us the company will continue to focus on organic growth as a primary means of scaling the business while assessing inorganic opportunities that address key strategic needs.
Accenture also recently announced a partnership with Biocelerate through which the organizations are collecting and analyzing preclinical and clinical information.