ABB Life Sciences, a division of Asea Brown Boveri, the world leaders in power and automation technologies is now targeting the pharmaceutical and biotech sector with its industrial IT (information technology) solutions to speed up time to market and validation processes in production and research which is subject to strict government control. The company has already worked for two major automation system installations in India for two companies namely Lupin Laboratories and Max GB. It has provided the systems for 15 installations for the pharmaceutical industry in the clean room area.

The company has devised an aggressive marketing plan for India where customer education to understand the upcoming regulatory requirements and use of latest technologies would be the main focus. This will comprise of short-term in-house training, seminars and workshops highlighting the US-FDA (Food & Drug Administration) directives like 21 CFR Part 11 and their compliance for research labs, clinical trials, bulk drug production & formulations plants (from raw material ID to finished product distribution warehouse systems), informed company officials.

The Indian operations will also take the advantage of ABB's presence in over 16 major countries worldwide with a clientele that includes majority of global pharma majors like GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Aventis, Merck to name a few, for tapping the business leads in India.

"We have started convincing the Indian pharma / biotech companies on the critical issue of regulatory directives in the 2005 patent era and use of latest technology to achieve the same and to reduce time to come into the market. Right now, discussions are underway with various forward-looking companies in India who are convinced on the importance of upcoming regulatory regime and validation," informed the sources.

A company will need to allocate 60-70 per cent of its earnings to meet the requirements of post 2005 era. Today, there are around 200 Indian pharma/biotech who need to gear up for a total transformation in the pharma biotech sector where regulatory compliance will become mandatory in manufacturing standards and quality norms, pointed out the sources.

The company is also known for its range of specialized state of the art and FDA compliant solutions for pharmaceutical industry, like the electronic batch record (EBR), which replaces paper documentation with electronic documentation complete with electronic signatures and audit trails. Apart from its line-up of instruments like analytics, QA/QC with FT- NIR analyser, advanced control systems and turn-key clean room systems.

The ABB Life Sciences division activities were launched in 1986 worldwide and have more than 250 installations worldwide.