In the latest outsourcing news, American outsourcing has a new frontier. Monitoring drug safety has grown into a $2 billion business, and outsourcing these responsibilities to India is becoming increasingly popular with Big Pharma companies in the US.

There are approximately 15,000 Indian citizens working in the industry, compared with the 200-300 involved in 2007. Critics of this particular BPO (business process outsourcing) example are concerned that relatively inexperienced workers are being trusted with jobs for which they’re underqualified. Any mistakes could have a drastic impact on the safety of numerous medical patients back in America.

However, this doesn’t appear to concern the Big Pharma organisations themselves. Companies such as AstraZeneca PLC, Novartis AG, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, all of whom outsource their monitoring of drug safety, will face multimillion dollar fines if any mistakes are made, and are even at risk of having their drugs pulled from the market.

So far, there’s been cause for joy rather than concern. Cognizant, a major outsourcing company, has confirmed that over 90% of its Indian pharmacovigilance workers have a bachelor’s degree in either pharmacy or a similarly relevant discipline. What’s more, Accenture PLC – which runs a large drug-monitoring operation in Bangalore – claims that it is meeting reporting deadlines for filing cases far more consistently than its clients did before they started outsourcing.

Perhaps interested parties shouldn’t be so quick to criticise companies the instant they opt to offshore. In this case, what was originally seen largely as an attempt to bring down labour costs has also resulted in quicker business operations with higher rates of efficiency.

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