Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) recently entered into an understanding with the Gujarat based Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT) University to outsource their expertise to upgrade existing self-licencing software Xtended Licensing and Laboratory Note (XLN) with added feature of geographic information system (GIS) mapping.  With this initiative the Gujarat FDCA wants to enhance and bring in incremental advancement in the e-governance system by adopting the advanced geographical features into it.

FDCA has already finalised all the details and will soon be sharing all the data with the concerned department of the university so that information can be migrated and used for requisite purpose. This move will not only help in strengthening the e-governance initiative further but will also help the Gujarat drug regulatory body to capture, store, manipulate, analyse, manage, and present all types of spatial or geographical data.

“Technology can do tremendous wonders in addressing lot of issues and it is with this in mind that we have decided to go a step further to make our e-governance initiative into a g-governance initiative as well. From a regulators point of view it will be a huge advantage for us to have GIS mapping as it will give us better perspective of all the places within our spectrum. It will not only enable us to visually view and check the number of chemist and druggist shops or manufacturing units within a particular area but will also help the consumers in getting better idea about the chemist or druggist shops within their area, “ Dr Koshia added.

Interestingly, the agreement between the Gujarat FDCA and CEPT  is based on mutual understanding between the two organisations wherein there will be no monitory gain but only public goodwill insight. It is understood that it will be a win- win situation for both, as Gujarat FDCA will be outsourcing the work to CEPT doctorate students who will be utilising their expertise and knowledge as a part of their doctorate project for the greater good of the society.

Dr Koshia further informed that this is the first time that Gujarat FDCA is experimenting and collaborating with an educational institute for such an initiative, which usually is done through National Information Centre (NIC).  Stressing further on importance of collaborating with educational institutes, Dr Koshia added that there is tremendous untapped potential within the countries academia which needs to be explored further.