ICON spokespeople
Mr. Barry Balfe
Expertise: Resourcing for Clinical Trials
Mr. Barry Balfe is Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Balfe previously served as President of ICON Pharma Division and prior to that, President, ICON Functional Services (IFS). Mr. Balfe has been with ICON for over fifteen years and has held a number of senior roles, predominantly within the FSP organisation, where he has successfully grown this business and has developed and led a number of new strategic partnerships. Mr. Balfe was previously EVP, Global Business Development. As part of the FSP team, Mr. Balfe served as Senior Vice-President, Global Program Management where he oversaw operational design, planning & delivery within FSP' resourcing & FSP businesses. He initially joined ICON’s Business Development team in 2003, before taking on the leadership of FSP' US Business in early 2007 and subsequently overseeing FSP' European Operations. Mr. Balfe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, having studied at Dublin City University and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Toulouse. He subsequently studied pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of London.
Recent media contributions:
- This spotlight feature in International Clinical Trials examines how pharmaceutical companies are increasing their functional service partnership expenditure at a rapid rate, and the key considerations in selecting and executing the FSP model which are being overlooked.
Tom O'Leary
Expertise: Innovation
Prior to this he held the position of Global Head of Data Management at ICON Clinical Research. He joined the company in Feb-2001 as Manager of Data management in Dublin. He subsequently went on to set-up ICON's process improvement initiative "IMPROVE" and returned to Data Management to become EU VP of Data Management before becoming Global Head of Data Management in 2006.
Recent media contributions:
- Tom O'Leary provides expert commentary on integrating AI and machine learning into Pharma R&D in this Bio IT World article.
- A thought leadership article authored by Tom O’Leary on how collected data from digital health technologies, coupled with novel clinical trial models, have the ability to increase the value proposition of drugs and medical devices.
- ICON’s CIO, Tom Leary discusses in this GBR article the challenges to patient recruitment during the COVID pandemic and how big data, combined with advanced AI algorithms processing has the potential to reduce trial costs.
- Financial Times Global Pharma and Biotech Summit 2020. Panel discussion: How Technology is Transforming R&D?