Recent mergers and acquisitions have resulted in billions of dollars in revenue for some of the world’s largest CROs, including IQVIA, Covance, Luxembourg-based Eurofins and Dublin’s ICON-PRA, according to a new analysis.

The analysis is an aggregation of data from public sources on 40 CROs’ revenue, number of employees and area of specialty. Eight CROs had revenue in the billions of dollars: IQVIA, with a revenue of $13.9 billion; Covance (LabCorp Drug Development) at $11.5 billion; Eurofins, with a revenue of $7.5 billion; ICON-PRA at $5.5 billion; Syneos at $5.2 billion; PPD at $4.6 billion; Parexel at $4.7 billion; and Medpace at $1.1 billion.

The CRO industry is projected to see rapid growth and change this year, propelled by a record number of new trial starts, increased adoption of decentralized trial approaches and a growing use of outsourcing by sponsors, according to the analysis by Applied Clinical Trials.