Around 350 healthcare professionals who have successfully been trained under union health ministry's skill development programme on regulatory aspects of pharmacovigilance (PV) will strengthen the 250 adverse drug reaction (ADR) monitoring centres (AMCs) in the country.
“These 350 qualified pharmacovigilance personnel who have been trained for effective PV will train other healthcare professionals in the country to strengthen the Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI) with 250 AMCs under its fold. This is also relevant as PvPI will also help other WHO member countries in PV and also help integrating it with healthcare programmes,”said Dr V Kalaiselvan, principal scientific officer, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC).
The national coordination center (NCC) of IPC under the union health ministry started the skill development programme in January 2017 at Ghaziabad and will start another one in January 2018 to produce and nurture PV professionals in the country.
As part of government’s ambitious Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana to produce qualified pharmacovigilance personnel, this programme will also initiate the process of creating a registry of skills, enable and mobilize a large number of healthcare professionals to acquire requisite skills for not only employment but also capacity building and strengthening of Qualified Persons for Pharmacovigilance (QPPv) as per the requirement of the Schedule Y of Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
Meanwhile, Government has also developed an advanced version of the android mobile app which empowers all the healthcare professionals and consumers for Adverse Drugs Reaction (ADR) reporting.
The mobile application which has been developed keeping in mind the patients, consumers and healthcare professionals is now available online for stakeholders. “Through this application, related images of ADR and lab investigation reports can be attached in a user-friendly manner for clinical assessment and signal detection,” said an official associated with the development.
IPC is an autonomous institution of the ministry of health and family welfare created to set standards of drugs in the country. It’s basic function is to update regularly the standards of drugs commonly required for treatment of diseases prevailing in this region. It publishes official documents for improving quality of medicines by way of adding new and updating existing monographs in the form of Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP). It further promotes rational use of generic medicines by publishing National Formulary of India.
The mobile application by the name “ADR PvPI” Android mobile app for ADR reporting has been developed to have administrative control of data with IPC, NCC-PvPI. This will empower all the healthcare professionals and consumers for ADR reporting with features like supports source document and image attachment, healthcare professionals as well as consumer reporting, XML generation and auto filling of report details to save time.
PV is a science that relates to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse affects or any other drug related problem. To track adverse drug reactions in Indian population, Union health ministry launched PvPI which has outreach all over the country but only a small portion of healthcare professionals have formal training in PV.