The Planning Commission has recommended formation of a Clinical and Medical Research Council in collaboration with private sector to establish and run new training programmes in this field. The move is in a bid to tide over the current shortage of trained personnel for clinical research, as studies put India ahead of China as Asia's top outsourcing destinations.

There is an acute shortage of clinical research personnel, estimated to be around 30,000 to 50,000 threatening to spoil the march of India as global destination for clinical studies, according to a report by the Planning Commission. The country is short of trial investigators, auditors, personnel to serve on ethics committees, data safety management boards and personnel in other categories, the Plan panel said while suggesting a council to oversee the training programmes.

The report said that India was way ahead of China in securing clinical research business. In the recent times, 139 trials were outsourced to India by global pharma companies, compared to only 98 to China. The market value of India's clinical research industry is projected to touch 1.5 to 2 billion dollars by 2010 from the current 300 million dollar.

A recent study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on trends in globalisation of trials also put India as 16th most popular clinical outsourcing destination while China was ranked at 23, behind countries like Brazil, Sweden, Mexico, Hungary, South Africa and Austria. But India still has just two per cent of the global trail market.

The latest trials outsourced to India included those from drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Johnson and Johnson who have 22 studies each in progress in the country. Eli Lily and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) with 17 each, Pfizer with 16, sanofi -aventis with 15, AstraZeneca on 10, Novartis with nine, Merck with eight and Roche on five are the other sponsors active, as per Planning Commission report.

India and China have "grown rapidly from an almost negligible base in just several years" and their high average relative annual growth rates, coupled with their very low density of trials and current levels of investment in clinical research infrastructure, suggest that they have potential to grow into "major players" in the future, according to MIT researchers.

A clinical trial is taught as a subject by 40 institutes in India, producing 5,000 graduates annually. However, the industry already needs 11,000 graduates a year to meet present demand and by 2010 it will require 50,000 staff specialising in clinical trials, industry sources said. The growth of the industry may also be hampered by lack of regulatory infrastructure and world class lab facilities, they added.