Lotus Clinical Research Academy (LCRA), the learning, consulting, research and analytics services major has entered into the corporate training and consultancy space, where it bagged three key important contracts for teaching and project development.

The assignments are to set up clinical research departments for a leading hospital chain and identifying medical centres for a multinational CRO to conduct clinical trials in India. It has also been signed up by Norwich Clinical Services, the CRO arm of Alvogen as its training partner to offer specialized skills for new entrants and its team of existing employees.

The Academy is also in scouting for opportunities in the information technology sector which is focuses on life sciences to conduct training. These would include IT majors like Infosys, Cognizant, Oracle and TCS among others. The need of the hour is keep ahead of the developments and employees require to be updated in this competitive environment. For this, LCRA has designed web-based courses which are short- term spanning for two to three days. The comprehensive and intensive curriculum is designed to mould the candidates to be thorough in the subject and know the pulse of the industry, Sudhir Pai, managing director, LCRA told Pharmabiz.

The three-year-old LCRA’s programmes’ in the field of Clinical Research are well accepted by the industry. Corporate training is only an extension of our services. Unlike the long-term diploma and two-year post graduate courses which pose the challenge of placements, corporate training sessions are a more knowledge-driven exercise benefiting both the trainer and the trainee. “The web-based and online courses are a trend because it is easier for employed candidates to undertake the training,” he added.

Under its consultancy initiative, LCRA has taken on the onus to identify hospitals which could be suitable for conducting clinical trials. In this connection, its efforts are to assess the patient load, speciality expertise and treatment protocols at hospitals. Evaluation of infrastructure availability and ethics committee formation are also extended, besides putting in standard operating procedures. It has already identified 24 hospitals in the Tier II and Tier III cities for one of its clients.

According to Pai, India’s expertise and economies-of- scale will drive opportunities for advanced training and consultancy in the life sciences sector.