WILMINGTON, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- PPD. (Nasdaq: PPD) has been named “Most Innovative CRO” by North Carolina’s Triangle Business Journal, recognizing the global contract research organization’s strong performance in a year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

PPD’s significant investments to expand capabilities for patient recruitment for clinical trials, investigator sites, laboratories, real-world evidence generation and technology solutions positioned the company, during the pandemic, to successfully provide continuity for customers’ ongoing trials and to start new trials. PPD enrolled more than 80,000 patients in COVID-19 trials and played a key role in helping clients develop COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

PPD also extended its digital clinical trials solutions to ensure patients and investigators could continue participating in trials, with electronic Clinical Outcome Assessments (eCOAs), remote eConsent, direct to/from patient models, home health care and nursing, wearables, telemedicine and remote monitoring.

“Recognizing early on that digital and decentralized solutions would increase trial access for patients and make it easier for them to participate, we invested in building a team of experts to design, configure and implement digitally enabled or decentralized trials,” said Niklas Morton, senior vice president of PPD^® Digital. “Patient safety always has remained at the forefront of our work, and when the pandemic hit, we were well positioned to respond by offering an extensive and flexible suite of digital trial solutions enabling customers to advance their clinical research programs.”

Based in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, a nexus of the CRO industry, the business journal holds its Life Sciences Awards each year to recognize individuals and research organizations that are leading the field.

The business journal has also named Brittany Erana, M.P.M., vice president for PPD Digital, to its 2021 “40 Under 40” list. Erana, who serves as head of operations for PPD’s digital trials team, has more than 15 years of experience in global research operations, strategy, digital implementation and delivery expertise. In her role, Erana is responsible for designing the operational infrastructure and capabilities necessary to successfully deliver decentralized and digitally enabled clinical trials, while maintaining the same high quality as with traditional clinical trials.

About PPD

PPD is a leading global contract research organization providing comprehensive, integrated drug development, laboratory and lifecycle management services. Our customers include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 47 countries and more than 27,000 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a firm commitment to quality to help customers bend the cost and time curve of drug development and optimize value in delivering life-changing therapies to improve health. For more information, visit www.ppd.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements often include words such as “expect,” “believe,” “project,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “target” and other similar expressions. Although we believe these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made, you should be aware that many factors could affect our actual financial results, and therefore actual results might differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might materially affect such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the fragmented and highly competitive nature of the drug development services industry; changes in trends in the biopharmaceutical industry; our ability to keep pace with rapid technological changes that could make our services less competitive or obsolete; political, economic and/or regulatory influences and changes; the risks related to the planned acquisition of PPD by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.; and other factors disclosed under the “Risk Factors” section in our periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on form 10-Q, which are available on our website at https://investors.ppd.com or the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. We assume no obligation and disclaim any duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements, or make any new forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

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