The National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) has announced a multidisciplinary post graduate course in "pharmacoinformatics" to help provide essential technical manpower oriented towards drug discovery. The first batch for the new course has been enrolled for the current year.

According to Dr CL Kaul, director, NIPER, the main objective of the course would be to teach the information management and integration techniques in the field of biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacy practice. The integrated syllabi would cater to diverse information into discovery knowledge by exploiting the advantages of emerging fields like bio-informatics, chemo-informatics, toxico-informatics, pharmacy-informatics etc. The course would teach the student the 'science and art of New Millennium Drug Discovery' for faster drug development.

"Drug discovery research has become much more complex science requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Converging concepts of several disciplines such as molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical sciences and computational technology has become more than a trend in education. It has become a necessity for solving real-world problems. The course is designed to teach the new millennium discovery science to the pharmacy graduates to become the successful drug discovery scientist in pharmaceutical industry", he explained.

NIPER has the unique distinction of having introduced a number of tailor-made postgraduate courses in recent times. It plans to introduce an MS Course in Traditional Medicine by mid 2004. The Post Graduate (MBA) course in Pharmaceutical Management is another unique course offered by the institute. "The Department of Pharmaceutical Management" is created with a view to provide a specialized, high quality education as preparation for professional positions in pharmaceutical businesses and industry," Dr Kaul said.

Beginning from academic session 2002-03, NIPER has introduced M Pharm in Pharmacy Practice. Three core areas, Clinical, Hospital and Community Pharmacy, have been identified as the core areas for the growth of the department.

Specialised programmes on pharmaceutical technology (both bulk drug and formulations), biotechnology, pharmaceutical analysis, natural products, pharmaceutics, etc are also part of the activities of the institute.