Dr J Vijay Venkatraman, MD & CEO of Oviya MedSafe, a global pharmacovigilance consulting and drug safety services company, has been invited to chair the first ever ‘Indian Pharmacovigilance Day’ conference, to be held on July 29, 2016 at Peninsula Grand Hotel in Mumbai.

Dr Vijay was the chair of the first UK Pharmacovigilance Day conference too, which was successfully organised at London in 2015.

The 'Pharmacovigilance Day' series of conferences has been organised in different parts of Europe by EasyB srl, an Italian company that specializes in producing conferences and seminars dedicated to the pharmaceutical sector such as clinical research, pharmacovigilance, statistics and epidemiology, across Europe, since 2008. The ‘Pharmacovigilance Day’ events aspire to bring together drug safety experts from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, pharma & medical devices companies, biotechnology firms, government agencies, academic research and so on, from a specific country or region with the aim of providing a platform for discussing pharmacovigilance issues that are unique to the concerned country/region.

While speaking to the media, Dr J Vijay Venkatraman, said: “India is globally recognized as a hub for generic drug manufacturing and the Indian pharmaceutical industry has carved a niche for itself in exporting its products to many developed as well as emerging countries. Of late, India is also being seen as a target destination for procurement of support services required for the global pharmaceutical industry, especially in pharmacovigilance. Simultaneously, we have seen changes for the better in Indian Pharmacovigilance such as XML-E2B format reporting of ICSRs to the Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI) and the March 8, 2016 dated gazette notification legally mandating pharmacovigilance for all pharmaceutical companies.”

“At this ripe moment, the task of integrating and streamlining the opinions and expectations of all stakeholders of Indian pharmacovigilance assumes significant relevance. The Indian Pharmacovigilance Day 2016 conference is all set to achieve this formidable goal with immense focus and dedication. During the conference, expert speakers from the industry, health authorities, research bodies, academia and healthcare delivery centres will share their perspectives on the multifaceted outlook of the discipline of pharmacovigilance in India and deliberate on the challenges they expect to face in 2016, covering several aspects of pharmacovigilance that India is involved in,” said Dr Venkatraman.

Enrico Pedroni, managing director of EasyB srl based in Bergamo, Italy expressed his happiness in organizing their first event in India. “It was a pleasant experience for us to work with Dr J Vijay Venkatraman when he was the chair of our first UK Pharmacovigilance Day. Hence, we felt we should organise the Indian Pharmacovigilance Day too with him at the helm of affairs”, he said.

He added that the one-day conference has been designed to benefit functional/technical professionals working in the pharmacovigilance/regulatory / medical affairs / marketing domains in organizations involved in pharmaceutical manufacturing / drug marketing / contract research, healthcare professionals in patient care, clinical investigators & research staff, academia and government health agencies, among others. “We are delighted to announce a flat 15 per cent discount for student delegates, to encourage large numbers of students to attend this conference, as we want the learning experiences of the conference to be disseminated throughout the larger student community”, Pedroni remarked.