Singapore: Indonesia is now part of a Quintiles diabetes study that's expected to enroll about 14,000 patients globally. This is the firm's first global study involving the country. The venture has been made possible by an exclusive alliance with Prodia Clinical Laboratory to provide high quality in-country testing of samples from Indonesian patients in clinical trials.

With a population of more than 240 million, Indonesia has been difficult to include in global trials because of requirements that all local samples be tested in-country before samples or data can be exported.

However, this long standing notion has been changed by the fact that Prodia has an exclusive alliance with Quintiles to test trial samples; and that it recent got accreditation by the College of American Pathologists, the world's foremost organization dedicated to laboratory quality improvement.

In November 2011, Quintiles announced an exclusive partnership with Jakarta-based Prodia Clinical Laboratory, through its sister company Prodia CRO, giving Quintiles exclusive access to Prodia's central laboratory for a two-year period, beginning with the first study in place.

Indonesia's large, ethnically diverse population faces a wide range of infectious and non-communicable diseases, making it a promising location to conduct clinical trials needed to bring new, better medicines to patients in need. Quintiles first opened an office in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2006.