Dr Akanksha Bisht, member secretary, National Drugs Survey, ministry of health and family welfare (MOHFW) and Sunish Singhal, technical associate, National Institute of Biologicals (NIB) have been presented an award by Partnership for Safe Medicine India recently at Varanasi for designing an innovative software being used in the National Drugs Survey conducted by NIB to study the extent of problems of spurious and not of standard quality (NSQ) drugs in the country. Initiated on April 6, 2015, NIB has been entrusted to conduct the drug survey by MOHFW.

The AKS software enables online transmission of data with reference to drugs drawn under the survey from NIB to the 10 central/state drugs testing laboratories. The test and analysis reports are also being received online by NIB from these drugs testing laboratories with the help of the software. The software has facilitated in ushering transparency and traceability in all aspects of this national drug survey.

Further, this software will be instrumental in statistical analysis of the field drugs survey and drug test/analysis laboratory data and report writing by NIB.

The award was presented by Justice Karunanand Bajpai of Allahabad High Court at a workshop titled 'National Consultation on improving access to quality healthcare through Universal Health Coverage: Varansai Initiative 2015' at Varanasi.

The national workshop was sponsored by MOHFW, department of pharmaceuticals (DoP), department of consumer affairs, ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution in collaboration with Partnership for Safe Medicine India, Consumer Conexion, Quality Council of India (QCI), Medlife.com and National Accreditation Board of Hospitals (NABH).

The AKS software named after its innovators Dr Akanksha (AK) and Sunish (S) enables online transmission of data with respect to drugs drawn by sample drawing officers from all across the country to NIB, an autonomous institute under MOHFW and National Coordinating Centre (NCC) for the drugs survey. The drugs survey has collected more than 43,000 drugs samples till date.