IQVIA, a leading global provider of advanced analytics, technology solutions, and clinical research services, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) today announced a strategic collaboration to enhance the world’s preparedness to rapidly conduct life-saving clinical research for vaccines and other biological countermeasures against emerging infectious diseases.
CEPI will harness IQVIA’s extensive clinical research expertise and innovative solutions, as well as its global reach, to support its goal of strengthening pandemic preparedness clinical research capability in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) to accelerate vaccine development when faced with future viral threats.
High-quality, sustainable clinical research capacity in outbreak-prone areas, utilizing standardized processes, protocols, and data management systems, could significantly increase the speed at which data about outbreaks and new vaccines can be generated during future outbreaks of infectious disease. This clinical research preparedness has been identified as a key enabler of the 100 Days Mission: a goal spearheaded by CEPI, and backed by the G7 and G20, which aims to accelerate the time taken to develop safe, effective, globally accessible vaccines against emerging disease outbreaks to within 100 days. The new collaboration between CEPI and IQVIA will provide tools and resources to help enhance research preparedness in underserved regions of LMICs during ‘peace time’ and support trial sites to respond quickly and effectively during outbreaks.
As part of its mission to enable faster and more equitable responses to future viral threats, CEPI will support the establishment of regional consortia, comprised of and led by national and regional stakeholders, to bolster research preparedness across LMICs. The regional consortia will identify gaps and needs in regional clinical research capability, and oversee the building of sustainable research capacity that can be swiftly put into action to respond to infectious disease outbreaks.
CEPI has embarked upon an ambitious five-year plan – called CEPI 2.0 – to dramatically reduce or even eliminate the future risk of pandemics and epidemics. Central to the plan is CEPI’s goal – supported by the G7 and G20 – to compress the time taken to develop safe, effective, globally accessible vaccines against new threats to just 100 days. Achieving this ‘100 Days Mission’ would give the world a fighting chance of containing a future outbreak before it spreads to become a global pandemic.
“Underpinning the 100 Days Mission is the need to get high quality clinical trials up and running as efficiently and swiftly as possible once an outbreak has been identified – wherever in the world that outbreak may be. Preparedness is key to this approach: building sustainable clinical research capacity during ‘peace time’ will enable trial sites to respond and operate at pace when faced with an infectious disease emergency. IQVIA’s world-class clinical research experience, its cutting-edge tools and technologies, and its footprint in LMICs makes it the ideal partner for our ambition to strengthen regionally-led clinical research preparedness, contributing to faster, more equitable responses to future outbreaks and pandemics.”
Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI
IQVIA will play a crucial role as a global service provider, utilizing its global reach and bandwidth to support the regional consortia and CEPI to fill gaps that will accelerate the generation of high-quality data during an outbreak response. Through this strategic collaboration IQVIA will develop and provide innovative tools and technologies to help facilitate more efficient and standardized studies, particularly in low resource settings; and provide quality management oversight and harmonization to ensure that the highest quality standards are maintained across multiple trial sites and regions. In the event of an outbreak, IQVIA will provide surge capacity to support clinical trial sites, whenever and wherever it may be needed across the globe.