After its entry into cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, the Clinical Research Education and Management Academy (CREMA) has set its eyes on Tier II cities like Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigarh, Baroda and Lucknow. It has earmarked Rs 25 crore for expansion in these cities.

CREMA is investing Rs. 25 crore for expansion in these tier II cities in fiscal 2009-10. This will take the total investment by the Academy to Rs 50 crore. The funds are sourced from internal accruals. Early this year, the Academy had made an investment of Rs 25 crore to establish centres in Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

The main reason for setting up new centres is to meet the shortfall of the clinical research trained personnel. Right now 10,000 professionals are employed at the 280 centres in the country and the estimated requirement is 50,000 by 2010. There is a serious shortage for trained people in the segment going by the number of clinical trials being carried out in the country which is around 600. More trials are going to come to India and shortage of trained manpower will affect the sector, CREMA chairman Vijay Moza told Pharmabiz.

Although the spadework is being carried out by CREMA to enter the tier II cities, efforts are on to open its Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad centres by early 2009, after which it will speed up the entry here, he added.

CREMA is now making efforts to concentrate on the tier II cities as there is huge scope for conducting trials in terms of patient pool availability. But there is a need to train doctors in ICH and GCP guidelines to serve as principal investigators. Present situation indicates that there are only a handful of principal investigators who are now loaded with clinical trial assignments in the metros. Many such investigators handle around 8-9 human studies. There is a need to move to the small cities going by the interest among doctors to offer their services in clinical studies. Besides there is also the need to expedite the trail and deliver results fast. Only with multiple locations identified for the trials will enable smooth conduct of the study. The Academy on its part is also educating the doctors on the lucrative opportunities, scope for growth and experience in clinical trials.

Apart from its courses postgraduate diploma in Pharmacovigilance (PGDPV), postgraduate diploma in clinical data management (PGDCDM), and postgraduate diploma in clinical research (PGDCR), CREMA now stands to gain with its new offering which came about after its association with the Clinical Research International, Canada to offer the one year course on Advanced post graduate diploma in clinical research (APGDCR) which allows candidates to enrol for online certification. This will see many life sciences and medical graduate students from tier II cities join the courses offered by it.

There is also a visible trend that future destination for clinical trials by sponsors will be the hospitals at tier II cities. Therefore our focus into these regions is only obvious, he added. CREMA's industry-oriented courses have been recognized by both domestic and multinational companies going by the recruitment of the first batch of students, he added.