Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) has entered a strategic engagement with Novo Nordisk, a leading player in the field of diabetic care, for the implementation of an off-shore clinical operations service.

Using its extensive domain knowledge and pool of skilled professionals from the pharmaceutical sector, the company will provide a suite of data management services, which include designing, capturing, and coding of trial data gathered from clinical trials that are run by Novo Nordisk across the globe, out of its state-of-the-art BPO facility in Mumbai, states a company release.

Novo Nordisk is actively working on its outsourcing strategy and already has number of agreements in place in India, in order to select a suitable partner. TCS was selected for its experience in healthcare domain as well as its unparalleled project management and quality processes and its ability to provide customers with a comprehensive end-to-end solution to address their needs.

"TCS has the ability to understand business processes and structure teams that have the right mix of operational and business professionals," said Milind Kamat, head, TCS BPO Services.

"Our deep domain knowledge and data management capabilities ensure that Novo can outsource large groups of trials to a single provider in a low employee cost geographic location to enable greater value creation," added Kamat.

The potential market size from outsourcing clinical trial management is expected to be around $ 1 billion in the next five years. Moreover, analysts estimate that by off-shoring part of these activities, the savings potential is in the range of 40 per cent of current costs incurred in capturing data from clinical trials.