Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has entered into a multi-year collaboration with Swiss healthcare company Roche to provide services related to drug development processes.

The collaboration with Roche will cover clinical data management, clinical programming, biostatistics and drug safety support as a part of the multinational’s Global Capacity Building Initiative (GCBI).

“This is the first such end-to-end deal we have done,” TCS executive vice-president and global head (life sciences and healthcare) J Rajagopal said.

According to Jean-Jacques Garaud, Roche global head (pharma development), “The partnership with TCS will allow us to address the growing operational needs of our development organisation and to handle the increasing workload.”

The Global Capacity Building Initiative programme will be staffed by doctors, pharmacologists, physicians, biostatisticians, pharmacists and informatics specialists. The operations would be handled initially from Mumbai and can expand to other cities later.