Companies from the two groups differ in background, scope, scale and global footprint. CROs are well-versed in managing drug development through all stages and have an established history of working with pharmaceutical companies. BPOs are better equipped to handle professional services at a larger scale and breadth. Therefore, they are in much stronger position to ramp up operations if required by global accounts. New business models are fast developing as Indian companies organize themselves to meet clients' operational scale and scope of requirements.

This means pharmacovigilance is expanding in India in a big way now and that this is evident to from several developments. In September 2010, Accenture reportedly partnered with Institute of Clinical Research in India (ICRI) to jointly develop a pharmacovigilance and clinical research program for the Indian market. Accenture had earlier signed a $550 million deal with pharma major Bristol-Mysers Squibb.
Wipro Technologies launched Wipro Clinical Collaboration Portal to reportedly help drug development owners, clinical research organizations and regulators to improve collaboration for multi-region clinical trials.

iGate Clinical Research International, formerly a subsidiary of iGate Corporation, is now considered a premier clinical trial management company. TCS describes itself as a leading clinical research and drug development service provider in India. It serves a range of global pharma firms and has on board healthcare professionals, doctors and PhDs in life sciences and pharmacology.

Also, Genpact boasts of over 500 personnel shouldering its clinical data intelligence service and Cognizant has recently become a preferred partner with Novartis and AstraZeneca for data management services. Cognizant's website details clinical research services on offer that range from epidemiology study to forecasting expected volumes of patients for clinical trials. Industry experts say that pharmacovigilance and clinical data management sectors are growing at a feverish pace with some pegging the growth rate at a whopping 100 percent.

Meanwhile, today's zero-tolerance drug safety environment requires pharma and CRO firms to adopt new strategies to quickly identify health safety concerns. They need more progressive thinking and business-IT models to address ever-evolving issues such as new compliance requirements for risk management, pressure to cut drug discovery costs, maintaining uniformity and consistency across global pharmacovigilance processes and integrating safety data from disparate sources