Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) has now come up with measures to kick start the collaborations between international and Indian pharmacy colleges. It is looking to further enhance the number of faculty and student exchange programmes between India and abroad. The international certification programmes and the creation of a Global Task Force in pharmacy practice increases promising prospects for pharmacists tackle much of medication errors.

The Council has engaged a few Indian pharmacy colleges to collaborate with those in the US, Australia, UK, Thailand, Malaysia and South Africa in the areas of research for herbal medicines and drug delivery.

“We have taken the best out of these countries to create quality standards but a lot needs to be done,” Dr B Suresh, president, Pharmacy Council of India and vice chancellor, JSS University Mysore told Pharmabiz.

“The collaboration between Indian and foreign pharmacy colleges is around two decades. There is need to take the whole model of academic exchanges to next level of interactions. The model of international collaborations paves the way for the development of the pharmacy practice education in India,” said Frank W May, director, Drug and Therapeutics Information Service, Adelaide, Australia who was in India for the Indian Congress of Pharmacy Practice 2014 at Bengaluru.

“The prevalence of medication misuse mandates patient-focused teachers and surgical specialists to educate the pharmacists on instant reporting of adverse drug reaction. This is the first step to widen the scope of practising pharmacist services, noted May.

According to Mike Rouse, assistant executive director, Professional Affairs and director, International Services, Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), Chicago, USA, only international and Indian pharmacy college collaborations would enable global accreditation of systems. Therefore the focus needs to be regulation, education and practice. Only educational outcomes can enhance the competence of the pharmacy graduates.

“The emergence of a need-based evaluation model with a global connection  for a pharmacist makes him accountable. It creates locally determined quality assurance systems. Collaborations should cover the milieu of teaching methodologies and student inputs. These outcomes could be short-term or immediate as it could achieve student learning and curriculum effectiveness,” stated Rouse.

Prof Krishna Kumar, Biopharmaceuticals & Pharmacokinetics, Howard University, Washington said that there are promising job openings in India or abroad for pharmacy candidates driven by India generic drugs industry growth expected to increase by 50 per cent in 2020 and a 43 per cent rise in chronic diseases by 2025.

Further, current medication error expenses are valued at $20 billion. A huge gap existed between written prescription and intended treatments where 24 per cent forget to take medicines, 20 per cent  reported side effects, 17 per cent found it too expensive, 14 per cent think they do not need a drug. “We now see a willingness among pharmacists to help and improve these standards across the world,” said Prof Kumar.