Quintiles is opening a business process outsourcing (BPO) and project management center of excellence in Dalian, China, a major city with a multilingual workforce and location ideally suited to serve the Japanese, Chinese and South Korean biopharmaceutical markets.

The Dalian office will provide data management, medical writing, biostatistics, pharmacovigilance, post-marketing safety surveillance and back-office support for administrative functions for global and local biopharma companies. The office also will support clinical operations for study sites in northeast China.

Dalian’s strategic location and talent pool will allow Quintiles to provide clinical services in English, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin (the local workforce is multilingual and has a cultural understanding of its neighboring countries), a valuable offering for both North Asian and global customers seeking to expand in the region or who want to ensure business continuity through resource diversification.

“Following the success of Quintiles’ Bangalore BPO center, which has over 1,000 people supporting global studies, the Dalian Center of Excellence will provide a North Asia support structure for our growing business in Japan, Korea and China,” said Anand Tharmaratnam, senior vice president and head of Asia markets for Quintiles.

Quintiles anticipates growing the Dalian center to 500 staff in the next several years once all services are fully established. It will be the company’s fourth hub office in greater China (in addition to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong).