The official website for the 61st Indian Pharmaceutical Congress (IPC), to be hosted by Indian Pharmaceutical Congress Association (IPCA) in December this year at Ahmedabad, has been launched. The website (www.ipc2009.co.in) will be useful for the online registration to the historical event and also providing all necessary information to the delegates and exhibitors of the event which is coming to Ahmedabad after a gap of 23 years.
Gujarat health minister Jay Narayan Vyas, inaugurated the website at a function at Hotel Grand Bhagvati, Ahmedabad.
Since the launching, there is an overwhelming response from visitors to the site. On the very first day on September 5, the site got more than 60,000 hits in just 8 hours, IPC chairman for press and publicity Manoj Tongra said.
The pharma professionals from different parts of India and all over world have flooded the server where the site has been hosted. In less then 72 hours the site has received more then one lakh hits causing heavy traffic. Most of the hits are being received from Indian networks which are followed by hits from US networks. Various types of networks from US accessing the website are US commercial, US educational and even US government official networks, which shows interest in the congress by diverse group of people, Tongra said.
The major visits to the site go to the registration section of the site which indicates that large numbers of delegates are registering as expected. The traffic to the website was such that the site is being shifted to the new enhanced server to cope up with the higher bandwidth usage in future, Tongra added.
As per website co-ordinator Kapil Khambholja some new features are being introduced to the congress website for the first time in India. The website would have interactive and searchable photo gallery, live help desk and large pool of downloadable material. The most interesting and useful feature being planned is Live Web Casting of important sessions of the congress. The live Web casting would benefit to those professionals who would not be able to attend to congress due to some reason.
Around 8,000 expected delegates would be benefited by the video available on Web for the sessions they could not attend due to many simultaneous scientific sessions being planned. The event host AIDCOC and local organizing committee are doing their best to make the even memorable. H G Koshia (commissioner FDCA-Gujarat) is the chairperson of organizing committee, Dr S P Adeshra (Ex Commissioner FDCA-Gujarat) is the chief coordinator, K K Goswami is the secretary of organizing committee and Dr A Ramkishan is the chief of scientific sub-committee of the event. All are optimistic and enthusiastic to utilize and provide best solutions on website for the benefit of the attendees and non-attendees to the congress.