Where are eClinical Companies Located?

Is anyone interested in where eClinical companies are actually located? Does it really matter in a global industry ?

I am and it turns out, it does.

I wanted to get an idea of where eClincial companies had located their headquarters so I spent an hour compiling a list of companies that I came across in searches, which were linked to on sites like http://www.clinpage.com and that I knew from memory. Not exactly a comprehensive list but I thought it would allow a general idea of where companies were located. Then I plugged them into google maps.

You can see the map below. It’s not what I was expecting. I had thought I’d see a lot on the west coast of the USA, a few on the east coast and some in Europe, Israel and India.

Here’s a list of the companies:

Akaza Research, Aris Global, Atlantic Research Group, AxxiTRIALS, Bioclinica, Bio-Optronics, BSI, Cerner, citeline, CMED, Consult Paragon, CRF Health, ePharmaSolutions, ERT, Excointouch, GoBalto, Huron, Innovocommerce, Intralinks, invivodata, Medidata, Merge, Nextrials, Omnicomm, Oracle, Parexel, Perceptive Informatics, Pharmanet i3, PharmaPros, PHT, Rubicon Clinical Technologies, Stephanini, Study-Portal, Target Health, United BioSource.

(Where a company lists multiple offices, only the first one listed has been used unless another is identified as the HQ. Also, not all of them are solely focused on eClinical but they all have eClincial products.)

What is clear though is that the vast majority (21 out of 35) are headquartered in New York, New Jersey and Boston. A few were on the west coast of the USA, a few in Europe, one in Brazil and none anywhere else (the one in Sydney is my own company (the site’s not up yet), I just couldn’t resist literally putting it on the map).

I haven’t added in all the affiliate offices, most of the companies with offices in multiple locations don’t focus exclusively on eClincial but it seems pretty clear that the eClinical companies are clustered around the pharma companies in New Jersey and the biotechs in Boston.

There’s two reasons I can think of that might explain it:
1. Staff leave the pharma and biotech companies and open eClincial companies in offices across the road.
2. eClinical companies are deliberately co-locating with their customers.

The first reason is implausible -why would eClinical companies be founded by staff working at pharma HQ’s and not offices outside their home countries, but the second one is interesting. Since eClinical companies are selling software used globally and the product doesn’t need to be physically shipped, why would an office close to customers matter that much?

It seems a bit ironic that in an industry where the products are used all around the world, in global trials run by global companies that it seems it’s still important to buy from the guy down the street.

What do you think? Is where your HQ’s location really important? Is this an opportunity for newer competitors to target their sales outside of the US east coast and the big pharmas? Do you want me to add your company to the map?

Let me know in the comments.