Phlexglobal, the leading specialist Clinical Research Organisation (CRO) for clinical trial administration, research staff provisioning and flexible resourcing has extended its Task Force services to incorporate the healthcare sector.

The Phlexglobal Task Force is a team of industry and NHS trained professionals available to provide short term interim resource at a moment's notice for anything from one day to six months. Their expert clinical research and healthcare sector knowledge ensure the Task Force have a sound understanding and awareness of the specific challenges facing the current market and are ideally suited to provide the proficient and specialist support needed when working within clinical trials.

The Task Force was created in May 2007 to provide a more flexible and cost efficient approach to expert resource provision. More recently, Phlexglobal recognised a need within the NHS for these specialist services. Officially launched at the joint Department of Health and ABPI (Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry) Annual Conference in Newcastle in May, Sarah Tucker, Phlexglobal's head of Task Force services, comments "To date we have completed a number of successful projects within the NHS and are looking to build upon that success and develop the working model further across the sector."

In the last six months, the Phlexglobal Task Force has helped to support numerous NHS Trusts within the South East and has conducted clinical monitoring assessments to help with pre and post MHRA inspection activities. The team has supported Pharmacy SOP reviews across Trusts and provided suitably trained individuals and teams to assist with other clinical trial associated activities. In June 2008, Gareth Hayes, head of Phlexglobal's training division, designed and delivered the first of many Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training courses to a team of nurses within the NHS to ensure GCP compliance and preparation methods for MHRA inspections.
There are three levels of support within the Task Force model: Task Force 1 offers specialist administrative support compliant with GCP and UK and European regulations; Task Force 2 focuses on the provision of experienced personnel who are able to ‘hit the ground running', be it site set up or coordination; Task Force 3 deals with more specialist tasks such as quality assurance, monitoring, pharmacy and audit/inspection support.

"The aim of the Task Force is to support Phlexglobal's range of flexible resourcing services and it is proving to be a winning formula," explained Nicola Murgatroyd, Phlexglobal's chief executive officer. "We secured a number of new contacts from the conference in May and have several projects now in the planning and set up stage.  This is a new and exciting market for us which I am confident we can continue to support effectively into the future."