Having produced around 400 trained pharmacovigilance personnel last year, the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC)  which is also the national coordination center (NCC) for Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI), has urged the pharma industry to take up skill development of pharmacovigilance personnel on high priority for effective compliance and oversight on drug quality.

Around 50 professionals will be trained every alternate month under the guidance of IPC as a step towards producing skilled workforce to further pharmacovigilance (PV) in India.

This is also aimed at strengthening the existing 250 adverse drug reaction (ADR) monitoring centres (AMCs) in the country. This comes at a time when PvPI has gained a lot of prominence with India being nominated to help other WHO member countries in PV through integration with healthcare programmes.

“The programme will also open up employment avenues in companies which have incorporated PV cells. We are encouraging the industry to set their priorities in this direction so that maximum number of professionals get benefited,”said Dr V Kalaiselvan, principal scientific officer, IPC.

As part of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, this programme will also initiate the process of creating a registry of skills, enable and mobilize a large number of healthcare professionals towards strengthening of Qualified Persons for Pharmacovigilance (QPPv) as per the requirement of the Schedule Y of Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

The IPC started the skill development programme in January 2017 at Ghaziabad to nurture PV professionals in the country.

Meanwhile, Government has also developed an advanced version of the android mobile app which empowers all the healthcare professionals and consumers for ADR reporting. The mobile application by the name “ADR PvPI” Android mobile app for ADR reporting has been developed to have administrative control of data with IPC, NCC-PvPI.

The mobile application which has been developed keeping in mind the patients, consumers and healthcare professionals is now available online for stakeholders. Through this application, related images of ADR and lab investigation reports can be attached in a user-friendly manner for clinical assessment and signal detection.

IPC is an autonomous institution of the ministry of health and family welfare created to set standards of drugs in the country. Its basic function is to update regularly the standards of drugs commonly required for treatment of diseases prevailing in the country.