What is the scope of work of a clinical researcher in the country?
There’s immense scope within the pharmaceutical industry and within the hospital set-up. People in hospitals, primarily doctors, conduct clinical research on patients. Then there are clinical researchers in the pharma industry or the clinical research organisations that supervise/ monitor the research (conducted in hospitals).

Are there adequate numbers of good clinical researchers in the country?
Yes, there are when it comes to monitors from the pharma industry and the CROs (contract research organisations), but we do not have many researchers in the hospitals actually conducting trials. India has between 500 and 750 good investigators — doctors who conduct clinical trials in hospitals. This number has to dramatically increase if good clinical trials have to happen here.

Where can a clinical researcher find employment?
Apart from the hospitals and medical research organisations, clinical researchers can work for pharmaceutical companies and CROs.

What are the challenges before the profession today?
One of the biggest challenges is to change the public perception of clinical research. In a country like India, unfortunately, the public perception of clinical research is negative, simply because India hasn’t introduced new drugs and, therefore, the Indian population has not realised that for bringing new drugs into the market you have to go through the process of clinical trials. For them, this is something that happens in developed countries. Clinical trials here are looked at, even today, with suspicion. A few isolated instances of clinical trials going wrong might have led to the mindset.

The second challenge is that there is a growing international competition in clinical research. As India is getting ready to conduct global clinical trials other countries are feeling the pressure as they think that if India goes ahead in clinical research, then the thousands of jobs that are created in their countries will start moving to India.

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