Drug Information Association (DIA) India is organizing an IT Life Sciences Summit 2012 with the theme “Technology Enabled Pharmaceutical Business Transformation” to be held on September 6 and 7, 2012 at the ITC The Maratha, Mumbai.

The two-day event provides a platform for the life sciences industry, regulators, information technology sector and IT enabled services industries to converge and consider IT intervention for enhancing competitiveness, reducing costs and bringing affordable medicines to market.

This summit will be addressed by over 45 industry leaders from both IT and Life Sciences in interactive sessions. The topics include: bridging the  Discovery and Development through IT, enabling an Integrated Clinical Enterprise, transforming landscape in Drug Development, Smarter Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management, Pharma Compliance,  Technology, Mobility and Analytics Driven Sales and Marketing.

The panel discussions at the summit will address if the pharma industry is exploiting IT enough to get competitive advantage among other issues.

According to the organizers, pharmaceutical companies are now turning to non-conventional ways of adding value to their business in order to overcome business challenges like patent expiry, declining R&D productivity with increased regulatory scrutiny and compliance requirements. With constant advancement in Information Technology (IT), the pharma industry is also keen on adopting innovative IT solutions to retain global competitive advantage. “The shifting trend in pharma towards increased adoption of IT beyond their traditional needs and exploring new IT avenues in digital marketing, regulatory submissions, predictive analysis & cloud computing has become more evident in the last few years.”

Santhosh Francis, director, Sales, Health Sciences Global Business Unit, Oracle will provide an introduction to the conference and Michael Davies, Vice President, Global Sales, Health Sciences Global Business Unit Oracle is the guest of honour.

The key note address session will be delivered by Siddharth Shah, senior manager and Lead R&D Practice, Cognizant, Anil Raghavan, managing director, Quintiles India and Sairamkumar J, Global Delivery Head, LifeSciences, Cognizant.

Day 2 will deal with the subject 'Smarter Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management'. The session will be chaired by Kamal Biswas, Global Management Consulting Practice Leader, Life Sciences, Infosys.

The topic ‘Learning’s from Implementing an ERP in Regulated Supply Chain Management Scenario and its Increased Productivity’ will be addressed by Sukdev Sen, director, IT, Thermo Fischer. ‘Advances and Future of Clinical Supplies and Reconciliation’ will be addressed by Sharad Gupta, vice president, Global Operations, Cenduit. ‘Securing the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain’ will be addressed by David Brown, principal consultant, British Telecom, UK. Kuntal Choudhury, Solution Architect, Oracle Sales Consulting will speak on ‘Increasing Efficiency and Productivity in Pharmaceutical Supply Chain.