Pharma outsourcing accounts for 75% of India’s healthcare BPO market: study

The pharmaceutical outsourcing market (excluding contract manufacturing services) accounts for almost 75 per cent of the estimated $3.3-4.2 billion medical process outsourcing (MPO) segment in India, a survey has said.

According to an Assocham-EY joint study released on Tuesday, the pharmaceutical outsourcing market currently stands at $2.5-3.1 billion.

“While the payer outsourcing market constitutes $700-900 million of India’s MPO market, the provider market accounts for the remaining share of about $100-200 million,” said the study titled ‘Medical Process Outsourcing in India’.

Domestic players are gradually moving up the value chain in terms of service offerings, while maintaining their cost competitiveness, it said.

“The BPO market is likely to grow at about 10 per cent year-on-year in the next three to four years globally, provider outsourcing at more than 30 per cent during 2011-2016, and the Contract Research Organisations (CROs) market at 18–20 per cent in the coming years,” the study pointed out.

The rising demand for high-end healthcare facilities and multi-specialty hospitals, established medical and central lab infrastructure, and training centres is contributing to the growth of the healthcare and life sciences industry, thereby fuelling the domestic demand for medical process outsourcing, it added. The research suggested that the Government should focus on implementing data privacy laws, and introducing proper regulations around intellectual property and patent laws, among others.

The challenges around privacy laws, intellectual property laws and changing clinical trial laws continue to exist.