Shire

"There is a moral aspect of getting drugs to market quicker," said Liz Oatten, head of global insurance for Shire, one of the world’s leading specialty biopharmaceutical companies.

"With rare diseases there may be no alternative treatment available and the quicker we can get the trial up and running the quicker we may be able to get the product approved and more treatment available for patients. If the insurance can’t be sorted out quickly, it can hold up the clinical trials for five, six, or seven weeks." 

Waking up from the administrative nightmare, Shire embarked upon clinical trials in numerous countries to test drugs for safety and efficacy.  The clinical trial process can be an administrative challenge. 

"This is not just from an insurance perspective; our study managers have to pull together a lot of documentation to submit to the ethics committees in order to get approval to carry out the trial at a particular site," Oatten said.  "Delays in that process cost us money; delays to the trial can result in knock-on delays to us getting a product to market and ultimately patients may suffer 

"RiskConsole has enabled us to improve the insurance procurement process from taking several weeks to a position where we have coverage in place with all the necessary evidence at the touch of a button, Oatten explained.  "We now have audit trails, good management information, and we have automated much of the process—basically transforming it from a paper-based system to an online process." 

 

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