> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.fdaweb.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Drug Development Outsourcing Increasing: Tufts Study
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/drug-development-outsourcing-increasing-tufts-study/
- Published: 2019-03-05T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T01:10:09.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5143523

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development says contract research services have become an integral component of drug development, representing the single largest category of research and development spending by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide. The Center’s latest [*Impact Report*](https://csdd.tufts.edu/impact-reports?ref=fdaweb.com) (subscription or purchase required) estimates 2018 expenditures at nearly $90 billion.

“Outsourcing practices remain inconsistent and highly customized,” the report says. “This invites inefficiency and unsystematic management practice. Although sponsor companies on occasion experience positive collaborations, they tend to be study-specific and often fail to scale across the development portfolio.”

Tufts notes that spending on contract R&D services has outpaced internal infrastructure. Overall drug development spending continues to rise 6%-7% annually, it says, despite efforts to rein in costs. Since 2010, spending on internal staff and infrastructure declined by 1%, study grant payments to investigative sites grew by 3%, and spending on all contract research organization services grew 8%.

The 10 largest contract research organizations controlled 57% of the estimated $33 billion spent worldwide on contract clinical services in 2018, an increase of about 12% in the last seven years, demonstrating, the report says, that the market is becoming more concentrated.

Small niche and specialty contract service providers have experienced strong relative annual growth approaching 10% since 2011, while the mid-size contract service provider segment had slower growth of about 4%.

The analysis shows that outsourcing is associated with shorter cycle times and often less variance in performance. It also finds that sponsors do not rely on a single or predominant outsourcing model.

“Oversight falls largely to executional operating levels and is typically reactive,” Tufts concludes. Sponsor companies indicated the top five areas that would affect the contract research oversight process are faster issue resolution, building in more tools and technologies to enable real-time communication and transparency, faster issue identification, more actionable insights and recommendations rather than simply data reporting, and better tracking to demonstrate oversight accountability in the event of an audit.