What can sourcing do for drug safety?
At a time of unprecedented change and with safety's workload increasing in both volume and scope, the question must be 'what can sourcing do for drug safety?'
There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that more resources are, and will be, engaged in the business of safety as adverse event (AE) reporting rates continue to increase (26% average increase year on year since 2006*) driving us to look throughout our organisations and beyond, for the capability we need to deliver what will be required of us. Inevitably, there is also clear evidence that ill-construed strategies, poor sourcing decisions, and poorly executed sourcing implementations can cause far greater problems than they can resolve.
Sourcing is not just about contracting with service providers to perform activities that could be conducting in-house (outsourcing). It is also about leveraging organisational operations owned by the sponsoring company (internal sourcing) which may be situated in low cost countries.
So, what can sourcing do for drug safety? Sourcing, when considered and approached correctly, can help to deliver the optimal solution; to ensure that patients and business, alike, are protected. Or it can make a whole lot of trouble for us.
The key then, to ensuring you get to the right answer, is to take a strategic view of sourcing, that is, to consider sourcing as one potential element in achieving the desired capability and capacity to operate an effective Pharmacovigilance (PV) system.
* Data source WCI pvnet Annual Reports 2007 - 2009
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What can sourcing do for drug safety?
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