Bangalore: India is growing as a preferred destination for global clinical trials and research, with the market being estimated to reach $1.5 billion by 2010, which may trigger a shortage of around 30,000 to 50,000 clinical research professionals by then.

“The Clinical trials market grew by around 65% in 2006. More foreign companies, especially from the US, were outsourcing their clinical trials and research to India,” Santosh Hegde, Bilcare Research, President, Clinical Research Services, said.

“There are a lot of trials occurring in fields like diabetes, oncology and lifestyle diseases happening in India,” he told PTI.

Fluency in English, high quality of medical personnel, lower costs and high availability of patients to conduct the research and trials is turning India a preferred destination,“ Thomas Adams, President and CEO, Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) said.

While in the US, it might take nearly three years to get around 100 patients to conduct trials on them, in India the same number could be gathered in about six months, which meant “it was a huge saving on time and money to conduct these clinical trials”, Santosh said.

Given the fact that the “clock” starts to tick in the US from the time the company obtains patent, “it was imperative for companies to accelerate their clinical trial time so that they could draw benefits once the product hit the market before the expiry of the 17-year patent period”, Santosh said.