Increasingly, big pharma is viewing the outsourcing of pharmaceutical manufacturing as a strategic move that would enable them to focus on their core competencies such as R&D. At the same time, the patent expiry of key blockbuster drugs worth $45 billion and biologics worth $30 billion is expected to reduce the capacity utilisation rates of their manufacturing facilities,

GE Healthcare, the healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE) and M+W Group, a leading global engineering, construction and project management company, have formed a strategic alliance aimed at overcoming the lack of key biopharmaceuticals, especially in emerging nations.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it is contributing a massive database of chemical data extracted from millions of patents and scientific literature to the National Institutes of Health. This contribution will allow researchers to more easily visualize important relationships among chemical compounds to aid in drug discovery and support advanced cancer research.

Springer Healthcare, part of Springer Science+Business Media, has signed an extensive three-year reprints and sales agreement effective 1 January 2012 with the American Society of Clinical Oncology® (ASCO), the world's leading professional organization representing physicians who care for people with cancer.

Global progress in both preventing and treating HIV emphasizes the benefits of sustaining investment in HIV/AIDS over the longer term. The latest report by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and UNAIDS Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Response indicates that increased access to HIV services resulted in a 15% reduction of new infections over the past decade and a 22% decline in AIDS-related deaths in the last five years.

Bio-Images Research and Medimetrics Personalized Drug Delivery have today announced a partnership to introduce the IntelliCap to the global pharmaceutical industry as a clinical research tool.

The use of long-distance video and data hookups to link remote community hospitals with stroke neurologists in large centres provides the same level of care as having everyone in the same room, according to a new study presented today at the Canadian Stroke Congress.