	Chicago, IL – KMR Group recently completed their Best Places For Clinical Research report series for 2016. The Best Places series continues to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of nearly 100 countries for over a dozen different therapy areas and diseases. This year’s analyses confirm existing Industry trends while highlighting some surprising new shifts.
	 
	The Best Places For Clinical Research reports ranks countries for specific disease areas using eight KPIs that assess performance, infrastructure, patient access, as well as cost. The results are presented for each individual metric in addition to an aggregate score which combines all of them together to come up with a singular overall rank.
	 
	This year the Oncology focused report highlights the strength of Eastern Europe, which now ranks second regionally right below Asia (excluding Japan). North America and Western Europe rank third and fourth respectively, while the Middle East and Africa perform the worst with the lowest regional scores.
	 
	China remains the top country overall, but Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania rank close behind. All these countries have relatively strong infrastructures for Oncology, but really outperformed other countries with their strong recruitment rates and access to patients. This highlights the importance emerging markets have had for the Industry over the last several years in maintaining and improving clinical development performance. The United States, which now ranks seventh globally, has the strongest infrastructure and patient volume across countries, but has high costs and only average recruitment performance which hinders its ranking.
	 
	“Understanding the shortcomings of certain countries within diseases as well as identifying the strongest performers is critical in trial planning and management. These reports serve as a strong foundation that can play a critical role in the early stage planning process and set reliable benchmarks in trial plans,” comments Linda Martin, President and Founder of KMR Group.
	 
	


	KMR Group has worked exclusively in biopharmaceutical R&D since the early 1990s. KMR Group is an industry leader in benchmarking, analytics and performance management as well as a developer of on-line analytics tools that enable access to their propriety and rich datasets. KMR's clinical platform contains the most reliable source for trial performance, recruitment and site metrics data, with over 25,000 global clinical trials. Clients rely on these tools to benchmark performance, define recruitment strategies and shape enrollment plans and to identify best performing sites. For more information or for a demonstration of any of KMR's tools, please contact us. Visit our website at 