London, UK – Global Healthcare Opportunities, or GHO Capital Partners LLP (GHO), the European specialist investor in global healthcare, acknowledges the announcement from its portfolio company, Velocity Clinical, regarding the strengthening of its management team as part of expansion in Europe.
The world’s largest integrated clinical trial site organisation, Velocity Clinical Research (“Velocity”), today announces it has strengthened its management team as it embarks on European expansion.
Pharmaceutical industry heavyweights have joined the team, including Dominic Clavell, Executive Vice President, Europe, Erin Williams, Vice President, Contracts and Regulatory and Charles-Hubert Devaux, Senior Director, Patient Recruitment.
Dr. G. Paul Evans, Chief Executive and President of Velocity Clinical Research, said, “Velocity is carving out a new category of pharma services. The clinical trials site landscape will look very different in the next 12 months and Velocity is well placed to take advantage of this consolidation in the market.
When US companies try to expand into Europe, they tend to do this remotely, attempting to manage operations from the States. We’re breaking the mould by putting boots on the ground.”
Dominic Clavell joins Velocity to head up its European operations after a decorated career in some of the top clinical research organisations, site management organisations and pharmaceutical companies in the world, such as Parexel, IQVIA, Synexus and Novartis.
Dominic Clavell, Executive Vice President, Europe, commented, “The experience of COVID has markedly changed attitudes in Europe towards commercial clinical research, which is why this expansion in Europe is so timely. We recognise that Europe poses a different set of challenges to the United States because of public healthcare structures, hence why a physical presence on the continent is paramount.”
Velocity is simultaneously strengthening its senior management team in the US as the company prepares for its next stage of growth, following its sale to GHO Capital in April this year.
Erin Williams joins Velocity as Vice President of Regulatory and Site Contracting from Parexel, where she was Global Head of site contracting and was previously in the same role for PPD. Williams commented, “Accelerating study start-up is key to speeding up clinical trials and bringing drugs to market quicker. The integrated nature of the Velocity site model puts us in a unique position to drive that, for example by providing a single site contract no matter how many sites we use”
Newly appointed Senior Director of Patient Recruitment, Charles-Hubert Devaux, was previously at Clinical Trial Media, a digital patient recruitment provider, and prior to that Clariness, said, “I’m looking forward to bringing my experience from previous roles held in France and Germany at a pivotal time for Velocity’s European strategy. The past 12 months has demonstrated the power that speeding up patient recruitment to trials has, particularly as the industry did some outstanding work, recruiting hundreds of thousands of people to COVID vaccine trials. But there is still a lot of work to do. We have to get better as an industry at engaging minority populations and I look forward to leading that for Velocity.”
Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, Velocity operates 18 fully owned sites across 12 US states. The company serves biopharmaceutical and contract research organisation (CRO) clients in primarily conducting phase II and phase III clinical trials in support of their global drug development programs. In just three years, Velocity has worked with over 200 biopharmaceutical clients, including all the top 10 pharma sponsors, and its sites have collectively conducted over 5,500 clinical trials.
All of Velocity’s sites are fully integrated via a centralised infrastructure and common technology backbone, allowing for superior patient enrollment and consistent, high quality data delivery.