The Global Market for Central Clinical Laboratories

We like to think that the pharmaceutical industry is a leader in outsourcing. In fact, previous studies have shown that the industry is at an early stage compared with the automotive or engineering industries, whereas the recent excitement about outsourcing clinical research to India lags behind other industries’ approach by several years (1).

Perhaps it is a little unfair to tar the whole industry with the same brush. In fact, it is really the pharmaceutical development area that is somewhat backward in outsourcing. Discovery, marketing, advertising and manufacturing plant construction are all well advanced in outsourcing.

The pharmaceutical development contract research scene is not new, with some of today’s CROs having started business in the late 19th century. There are in fact a few CROs in North America and 15 in Europe that were founded prior to 1960. Today the drug development sector of the outsourcing industry in the pharmaceutical industry is valued at over US$10 billion (2). This sector, however, is little-known to the public at large and only occupies a small part of the attention of industry and financial analysts. However, it is fair to say that without contract organisations, the industry would be unable to function as it does today. The central and core laboratory segment is an important part of the whole outsourcing market, but relates to only a certain part of the outsourced development sector as shown in Figure 1.

Estimating the size of the market for central laboratories is fraught with difficulties. We have noted previously that the size of the CRO market is similarly difficult to estimate (3). The data analysed in this article are drawn mainly from The Technomark Register using data that have been freely supplied by CROs in the Register (4). These data have been supplemented by data supplied by the top 20 central laboratories.