Two students of pharmacovigilance of Symogen have won international recognition for their project works, which have been selected for presentation at the 8th International Society of Pharmacovigilance Conference, to be held in Buenos Aries, Argentina from October 5 to 8.

Dr Monalisa Pawar and Dr Avinash Kakade, students of the second batch of the certificate course in pharmacovigilance and pharmacoepidemiology at the Mumbai campus of Symogen, won the honour. Their abstracts on "Comparison of Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) of Cardiac Drugs Marketed by Indian Companies with the Original Company Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC)" and "Set-up of a Model Pharmacovigilance Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) Centre in India" were selected for presentation.

This was part of the project thesis work submitted as part of the course. Earlier, the ISPE Scholarship Committee had granted Deepa Alimchandani to attend ICPE 2008, from August 17-20, 2008. Deepa was the student from the first batch from New Delhi. Managing director of Symogen Dr Pipasha Biswas claimed that it showed the standard of the course and level of guidance.

International Society for Pharmacovigilance (ISOP), headquartered in Europe, is an international organization dedicated to advancing the health of the public by providing a forum for the open exchange of scientific information and for the development of policy, education and advocacy in the field of pharmacovigilance, drug utilization research and risk management.

Symogen, headquartered in London, had initiated the first ever certificate course in Pharmacovigilance & Pharmacoepidemiology from September 2007, the first of its kind in India. The first batch of students completed the course in December 2007 that was held in New Delhi. The second batch in Mumbai which started in March 2008 finished at the end of June 2008.