AstraZeneca, one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical groups, has announced a major business process outsourcing (BPO) project worth £47.4 million.

The new project is aimed at reforming the company's clinical data management, and it complements an even bigger, £684 million, IT outsourcing contract signed with IBM last year.

Under the latter deal, IBM will provide IT infrastructure managed services to AstraZeneca's pharmaceutical industry activities in 60 countries worldwide.

The clinical data management project has been agreed with Cognizant, and represents AstraZeneca's first foray into BPO.

"We've been working with Cognizant since 2004 on infrastructure services, but this is the largest deal of its kind in the industry I believe," Eric Terhaerdt, AstraZeneca UK clinical development vice president and project lead, told ITPro magazine.

"We currently use 60 different systems to manage clinical data and we anticipate bringing this down to 30 by mid-2009, which will lead to efficiencies and be easier to manage," he continued.

Mr Terhaerdt emphasised interoperability and system standardisation as other benefits of the project.


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