Benedikt Egersdoerfer joins Parexel to lead Global Data Operations

Benedikt Egersdoerfer joined Parexel Aug. 1 as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Data Operations (GDO). In his new role, Benedikt will continue to enhance our high-quality delivery performance to drive repeat business and growth. He’ll provide oversight for all GDO functions such as Data Management, Statistical Programming, Biostatistics, Medical Writing with a focus on further strengthening the seamless coordination and collaboration between Global Clinical Operations (GCO) and GDO.  

Benedikt brings more than 25 years of pharmaceutical and CRO industry experience and has played a transformative role in establishing and leading departments dedicated to data acquisition, integration, analysis and reporting. Through participation in industry-leading initiatives such as HL7 Vulcan and TransCelerate BioPharma Inc., Benedikt was actively involved in advancing clinical research to meet the evolving needs of our patients and customers for the future.

Benedikt’s expertise spans a broad range of disciplines, including Biometry Standards, Clinical Data Management, Medical Coding, Statistical Programming, Biostatistics, Medical Writing and Data Sciences. Most recently, he led the Global Clinical Data Sciences and Analytics department for Bayer, overseeing approximately 1,000 FTEs in Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

What are your priorities in your first six months at Parexel?

I look forward to engaging with the GDO team, with leaders across the company and with our customers to better understand our strengths along with opportunities for improvement. From these learnings I look forward to building on our strategy to support Parexel’s business priorities.

What do you see as the greatest opportunities for GDO and how will those advance clinical development at Parexel?

It starts with a diverse team of GDO colleagues who represent very different technical disciplines and who need to focus on cross-functional collaboration as a key to success. We need to and will work across all functions in GDO as one GDO team in collaboration with our GCO colleagues at Parexel to be more efficient and support approaches like centralized and risk-based monitoring. 
We will also leverage technology as intensively as possible to transform the way we operate, including increasing automation to help with innovative data ingestion and processing. 

One way we will do this is to look at how we can leverage electronic health records (EHR) for example, for patient identification or innovative clinical data ingestion using advancements made in HL7 Vulcan (an organization dedicated to developing standards to provide for the exchange, integration, sharing and retrieval of electronic health information). By doing this, we have an opportunity to get closer to sites and patients. 

Lastly, we will shift from a data operations mindset to a data science mindset over the next couple of years. We have an opportunity to generate more and better data insights based on all the data we have already and from new data sources like real world data as we work in collaboration with other functions at Parexel. Then we will use those insights to drive operational efficiency and scientific development for our customers and ultimately to deliver for our patients.

At Parexel, we do everything With HeartTM. What does that mean to you and how are you thinking about that in terms of your new role?

The data in our databases comes from patients, and if they are participating in clinical research, they are probably overloaded. I strongly believe that GDO in close collaboration with our colleagues in GCO can make a difference in lessening the burden for patients and for sites in how we collect data.

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