Offshoring Trends Net Biotech Firms

Makarand writes "According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BioTech, once considered to be the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring, is showing signs of riding an offshoring wave of its own. Foreign governments with a national priority to attract biotech businesses with highly trained research workers and new research centers are the new forces to reckon with in preventing the exodus of biotech jobs. Drug developers are looking at ways to cut costs of drug development as Americans and their employers are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs. The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring."

Comments

Re:Prescription Drugs in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes there are subtle differences between the label and generic drug(s) that can justify the label drug.

One particular case is thyroid hormone replacement therapy, where it is generally accepted practice to not switch product, whether it be generic->label (synthroid) or label->generic. Doing so requires recalibrating your thyroid hormone levels...

Many times, patients want the label drug...

Doctors tend to leave the decision of what drug to actually fulfill the prescription with to the pharmacist...

Some health insurance plans have acceptable formularies that only include generics where possible or policies that pharmacists must provide generic instead of label, where possible.

Check the comments starting from the second one..

[d2k297]

Interesting discussion: http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html