Loading...

A robust R&D project portfolio optimization model for pharmaceutical contract research organizations

Hassanzadeh, F ; Sharif University of Technology

835 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2014.07.001
  3. Abstract:
  4. Pharmaceutical drug Research and Development (R&D) outsourcing to contract research organizations (CROs) has experienced a significant growth in recent decades and the trend is expected to continue. A key question for CROs and firms in similar environments is which projects should be included in the firm's portfolio of projects. As a distinctive contribution to the literature this paper develops and evaluates a business support tool to help a CRO decide on clinical R&D project opportunities and revise its portfolio of R&D projects given the existing constraints, and financial and resource capabilities. A new mathematical programming model in the form of a capital budgeting problem is developed to help revising and rescheduling of the project portfolio. The uncertainty of pharmaceutical R&D cost estimates in drug development stages is captured to mimic a more realistic representation of pharmaceutical R&D projects, and a robust optimization approach is used to tackle the uncertain formulation. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the proposed approach
  5. Keywords:
  6. Pharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) ; Project selection and scheduling ; Budget control ; Cost estimating ; Financial data processing ; Mathematical programming ; Outsourcing ; Scheduling ; Uncertainty analysis ; Contract Research Organizations ; Project selection ; Research and development ; Robust optimization ; Uncertainty ; Mathematical models
  7. Source: International Journal of Production Economics ; Vol. 158, issue , 2014 , p. 18-27
  8. URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527314002059