Anticipating big scope for opportunities for clinical trials in India in the coming years, former Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) Dr Surinder Singh has suggested to the medical community to pursue the Harvard University’s online free course on ‘Clinical and Public Health Research’.

He has made the request through an online discussion forum of doctors and health professionals, and forwarded a letter, sent to him by the vice-president of Piramal Enterprises, Dr Swati Piramal who was recently elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers, a 350-year old governing board of the Harvard University in Boston in USA.

By persuading the medical community to pursue the course, Dr Singh opines that the Indian pharmaceutical industry has the potential to become ‘Pharmacy of the World” in another one decade. He declares that there is big scope for clinical trials in the near future in India, so the course will help the medical professionals in a big way.

His email to the forum members says that recently there has been a paradigm shift in the Indian pharma industry’s thrust from production of generics to innovation, i.e. drug discovery & development which entails an increase in conduct of clinical trials, especially the ones which require high degree of domain expertise i.e. micro-dosing studies (phase 0), phase I & phase II clinical trials.

“Having been the former Drug Controller General of India till November 2011, I can appreciate the importance of this course for the medical fraternity and bring it to your notice, so that you may like to avail this opportunity to enhance your skills to become top professionals in clinical research or investigator for conduct of clinical trials,” he said in his email to the members.

According to him drugs from India are exported to more than 200 countries and vaccines to about 150 countries across the world.

Currently Dr Surinder Singh is the director–in-charge at the National Institute of Biologicals, Noida.

Dr Swati Piramal’s letter to Dr Singh clarifies that the course, “Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research’ is the online adaptation of material from the Harvard School of Public Health’s classes in epidemiology and biostatics. This course will address the need by covering the principles of biostatics and epidemiology used for public health and clinical research.