What Cognizant gets wrong in Healthcare
Cognizant's pharmaceutical technology practice applies the same offshore managed services model as every other vertical — which creates a specific problem in pharmaceutical environments where FDA 21 CFR Part 11 imposes audit trail requirements on electronic records that the offshore model complicates. Every developer who touches a validated system is part of the audit trail. A globally distributed offshore team creates audit chain-of-custody complexity that QA teams spend months resolving before submissions.
Clinical data management systems, laboratory information management, and manufacturing execution systems all require GxP validation — a formal process that documents what the system does, how it was tested, and what happens when it fails. Cognizant's managed services model treats validation as a documentation workstream rather than an engineering discipline. The result is a system with validation documentation that describes a theoretically compliant system, rather than a tested and verified compliant system.
The managed services dependency in pharmaceutical technology is particularly damaging because validation is tied to the vendor. If you exit a Cognizant managed services contract, you exit with a system that is validated under a change control process that was managed by Cognizant. Rebuilding the validation package under a new change control process is a significant technical and regulatory effort.
What we deploy instead
Our pharmaceutical technology teams are GxP-qualified and understand validation as an engineering discipline, not a documentation exercise. Validation packages are built as the system is built — not assembled after the fact from retrospective documentation.
We build pharmaceutical systems that your validation team can maintain after we close the engagement. The validation documentation, change control procedures, and test scripts are designed for internal sustainability — not for managed services dependency.
FDA 21 CFR PART 11 and HIPAA built into the architecture from day one — enforced automatically by ALICE at every commit.
Fixed-price engagements. Production system in 8-20 weeks. No discovery phase. No change orders.
Domain-qualified engineers with healthcare experience. The senior engineer who scopes the engagement is the senior engineer who delivers it.
Full source code and documentation transferred at close. No licensing. No managed services dependency.
The compliance difference
FDA 21 CFR Part 11, GAMP 5, GxP validation, HIPAA for patient-adjacent pharmaceutical systems. Offshore delivery creates specific Part 11 audit complexity. We eliminate it with onshore delivery and embedded validation engineering.
What switching from Cognizant looks like
Pharmaceutical technology engagement: 14-22 weeks for a GxP-validated production system. Team: 8-14 engineers, 1 validation specialist. Fixed price. Full validation documentation package at close.
Architecture review and scope definition. We review existing deliverables and identify gaps.
Scope locked, team assembled, first sprint underway. Working code from week two.
First production milestone — a working integration or system component, not a document.
Full IP transfer. Source code, documentation, operational runbooks. Your team runs the system.
Failed Vendor Recovery Playbook
Step-by-step framework for recovering from a failed Cognizant engagement — from emergency stabilisation through full re-platforming. 4-phase playbook covering stabilise, assess, transition, and normalise.