MNC pharma companies are waking up to the potential of using India as a base for software development. Companies like Novartis and Pfizer are said to be looking at captive centers in their Indian subsidiaries for software development.

Most of the companies are looking at developing and enhancing specific software applications developed in-house.

MNC pharma companies are waking up to the potential of using India as a base for software development. Companies like Novartis and Pfizer are said to be looking at captive centers in their Indian subsidiaries for software development.

Most of the companies are looking at developing and enhancing specific software applications developed in-house.

Novartis is planning to set up a software development unit in the country. The company has already started a software development cell, which is doing projects on a pilot basis and this will be scaled up in the near future.

According to a senior company official, the unit will be involved in doing a lot of Infotech processing-related to drug development work. “Novartis is among the many companies that are looking at outsourcing IT related work to India where it can be done cost-effectively,” the official said.

The setting up of software development unit is the second non-core initiative that Novartis Pharma AG, the parent company, is doing out of India. In 2002, Novartis Pharma set up the Novartis International Clinical Development Centre India (NICCI) in Mumbai.

NICCI is one of four such Novartis centers in the world and the first in Asia. Novartis Pharma AG has similar centers at Basel in Switzerland, the UK and the US. India was short-listed after considering six Asian countries that include China, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. The reason for India was that it was cheaper, had plenty of English-speaking statisticians and adequate communication and information technology infrastructure.

Pharma MNC Pizer is also scaling up the data management work that is being done out of India. Last year, the company expanded the scope of activities of the Biometrics division, which is part of the Development Operations Group of Pfizer Global Research & Development in India. It recently added data management for Ann Arbor and the activity of programming and reporting for the Development Operations group in Japan.

Pfizer has also created a unit specializing in the design of case report forms and databases as an extension of the Study Start Up group that was created in New London.