Novartis Pharmaceuticals was announced winner of the overall prize
for PharmaTimes Clinical Company of the Year at an awards ceremony in
central London on February 16.
The competition was created in
1999 to provide pharma companies, clinical research organisations and
NHS research sites with an opportunity to test their professional skills
in a programme of competency-based exercises developed through a
cross-industry collaboration.
A total of 270 clinical researchers
and 41 NHS research sites entered the competition in February 2011 and
were filtered through a number of exercises to identify the top
individuals, teams and organisations, with the overarching aim of
providing development for the individuals who enter combined with
organisational and industry benchmarking for the clinical research
fraternity as a whole.
Representing the organisers of the
competition, PharmaTimes, Sean Morgan-Jones commented: “Clinical
research is under enormous pressure at the moment with escalating costs
of doing research, combined with ever tougher regulatory hurdles and
increasing downward pressure from governments on the costs of
healthcare. The theme for the competition in 2011 was around doing more
with fewer resources while maintaining total focus on patients and the
quality of outputs.
"Everyone who progressed through the
competition and particularly the finalists and winners should feel very
proud of their achievement. These people represent the future of
clinical research and so should be applauded by their colleagues, the
companies that have nurtured and developed this talent and the wider
clinical community,” Mr Morgan-Jones added.
Joining Novartis on the winner’s podium were:
NHS Research Site of the Year
- The National Institute for Social Care and Health Research Clinical
Research Centre (Lynette Lane, Wendy Wade, Leanne Quinn, Hayley Tapping)
Clinical Trial Administrator of the Year – Natasha Lee, Boehringer Ingelheim
Clinical Researcher Associate of the Year – Mandeep Budwal, Novartis
CRO Project Manager of the Year – Marina Kiseleva, Covance
Pharma Project Manager of the Year – Ian Gravenor, Novo Nordisk
Line Manager of the Year – Louise Armitage, Quintiles
Clinical Team of the Year – Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (Sameena Amjid, Neil Watson, Nicola Knox, Stuart Meredith)
In
addition to the Clinical Researcher of the Year announcements, the
winner of the PharmaTimes Clinical Recruiter of the Year was announced
as Andy Wise from Blue Pelican.
The first stage of the
competition requires entrants to complete an online multiple choice
questionnaires prepared by the Institute of Clinical Research, which
tested technical competence on ICH/GCP - 85% achieved the required
standard with the NHS Research Sites performing particularly strongly on
this stage in comparison with previous years.
The second element
of the competition tests entrants on specially created case studies
where the overall theme was doing more with the same resources, through
greater efficiency whilst maintaining total focus on quality and patient
care. The top performers at this stage were invited to attend
face-to-face interviews with the judging panel at the finals in November
2011 with all the results in each of the eight competition categories
announced on February 16 to an audience of 300 European researchers.
More
than 300 entries from 29 countries including the UK, India, Argentina,
Indonesia and Brazil, were received for the 2011 competition.
PharmaTimes are welcoming registrations of interest for the 2012
competition – if you would like to enter or take a closer look at what
is involved, click here.
For
more information about the PharmaTimes Clinical Researcher of the Year
contact Sean Morgan-Jones (sean@pharmatimes.com) tel +44(0)20 8878 8566.
This year's event was sponsored by I3 pharma
resourcing, PPD, INC, Stiefel, QED Clinical Services, Clinical
Professionals, GSK, ABPI and NIHR.The views expressed in the following comments are not those of PharmaTimes or any connected third party and belong specifically to the individual who made that comment. We accept no liability for the comments made and always advise users to exercise caution.