A time for action: fighting COVID-19

The growing outbreak of COVID-19 has affected each one of us in multiple ways, our families, friends, businesses and way of life. This fast-changing situation has forced us to re-evaluate how we operate. At IQVIA, we are working on using this challenge as an opportunity to make our company more dedicated, more efficient, and more focused on serving the needs of our clients, a better company to partner with in our common mission of bringing healthcare treatments to market faster and of improving outcomes for patients. To manage through the crisis, we have established a new agile governance cadence. Our CEO Command Center meets daily at 4 p.m. EDT and maintains coordination with each of our Global Business Unit and Regional level Command Centers, as well as our Medical & Scientific Task Force, IT Task Force, HR Task Force and Finance Task Force. In this letter, we would like to update you as a leadership team on how we are managing this crisis and helping the healthcare industry respond to its challenges.

Putting safety first. Our first priority is the safety of staff and the patients, healthcare professionals, customers and suppliers we frequently interact with. To limit exposure, we have prohibited international travel, closed facilities and asked most of our staff to work remotely. We have added bandwidth and VPN capacity to our advanced infrastructure to avoid service disruptions. To date, this transition has gone smoothly. Our data production centers remain fully operational and our technology, analytics, primary market research and real-world deliveries continue in the ordinary course per existing business continuity plans.

Minimizing disruption to clinical trials. As supply chains are disrupted, as clinics and hospitals become inaccessible or as it becomes sometimes unsafe or difficult for patients to travel, we are doing everything in our power to ensure science and innovation do not stop. The situation is fluid and we have been monitoring daily, and sometimes hourly, each trial, each site, each enrolled patient, to maintain the integrity of our ongoing trials. We are coordinating closely with local health authorities and customers to deploy, when appropriate and feasible, our services and technologies to further increase remote-based CRA and centralized monitoring for trials, remote patient visits (aka virtual trials), supply logistics and other remote interactions between patients and HCPs. We are currently transitioning significant portions of trials to our Study Hub Virtual Trial execution platform, including Televisit, digital interaction and more, to enable study continuity on a global basis.

Helping organizations plan & manage for the outbreak. We are applying our people, data and technology, to bring AI and insights to help accelerate responses and planning efforts. We have provided data scientists with information and tools to understand the rapidly evolving dynamics of the outbreak to predict how things will develop. We are rolling out new remote-detailing solutions and workflows to support remote-based working. In Japan and Italy, for example, we are creating AI-powered forecasting tools that are helping predict the progression of COVID-19 — this will expand to other countries in Europe soon. In the UK, we are providing analytics and staff who are physically working side-by-side with government officials to help monitor the drug supply chain. And in the U.S., we are working with key federal agencies to provide data and insights that will help them manage capacity and demand across the health system.

Helping accelerate the development of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. Lastly, we are joining the global response to the crisis and contributing our resources to its resolution by providing IQVIA staff, technology and expertise to support the development of new treatments. In Asia, we are providing an IQVIA team to help develop two new treatments for COVID-19 using existing HIV and flu vaccines. In the U.S., we are partnering with academic institutions to develop new lab tests to identify vaccine candidates quicker than currently available tests. And in Europe, we are collaborating with governments and the pharmaceutical industry to develop several experimental vaccine candidates using our Prime Site networks and data assets to accelerate timelines. If successful, all of these will bring much-needed treatments to patients quickly.

 

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We would like to end this letter with a message that there is light at the end of the tunnel. This outbreak is extraordinary in terms of scale, speed, and uncertainty but there is reason to be optimistic. The Chinese National Health Commission recently reported almost no new domestic cases, approximately 60% of hospitals outside of Hubei Province are now accessible to patients, schools are slowly reopening and life beginning to normalize. Even with the recent turmoil, we are still expecting growth in the Chinese pharmaceutical market this year. Given all these signs, we are hopeful that by end of May, China will almost fully recover. You will find our latest update, insights and analysis on the situation in China by clicking HERE.

In these most unusual of circumstances, IQVIA is renewing its commitment to becoming a better partner to you, to marshal all our talents and resources at the service of the greater cause we all work for, to benefit the health and wellbeing of patients everywhere. We will continue to be here to help you accomplish this objective during and after this crisis is over.

Ari Bousbib
Chairman & CEO

 

More information can be found in the IQVIA candidate resource centre, which can be found by clicking HERE