Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) is working to have a live electronic registrations system that would display details of qualified pharmacy personnel across the country at any given point of time.

The Council intends to have an end-to-end platform to trace and track its qualified pharmacy personnel.

“Our resolution is to monitor the pharmacy manpower be it D Pharm, B Pharm, M Pharm, Pharm D. In order implement the live electronic registration system, we are in the process of identifying the software and hardware providers,” Prof. B Suresh, president, Pharmacy Council of India, vice chancellor, JSS University and chairman scientific body, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission told Pharmabiz.

Indian pharmacists need to be competitive. Having information about the qualified personnel would improve efficiencies, he added.

“Keeping an updated record of details on pharmacists is critical for the growth of this profession. For instance, central and state government pension schemes mandate annual renewal of life certificates. The Unique Identification (UID) Aadhar programme is here to maintain Indian population database. Government is keen to ensure annual registration of not just pharmacists but also nursing among other related medical professions,”  DA Gundu Rao, president, Karnataka State Pharmacy Council and member Pharmacy Council of India.

It is also gathered from sources that the Union government through the PCI is insisting that all states adhere to the Pharmacy Act of India, Section 34 which refers to annual registration of pharmacists. In February 2013, the Himachal Pradesh High Court passed a judgment calling to adhere to Section 34 of the Pharmacy Act 1948.

Following Himachal Pradesh High Court judgment, the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA) students wing now plans to take the matter to the Courts of their respective states if State Pharmacy Councils do not adhere to Section 34, stated sources.

Section 34 clearly specifies that each state Government required to ensure annual registration and pharmacists are issued receipts as proof. But the reality is that the implementation of Section 34 seems to have gone haywire. “Most of the state pharmacy councils went on to issue a life certificate for a period of five, seven, 10 and 12 years. This led state councils including Karnataka State Pharmacy Council (KSPC) to have lost count on the registered pharmacists,” said Rao.

Currently, Karnataka, accounts for around 40,000 pharmacists under life certificate registration format. However in 2010, KSPC mandated annual registration and has a readily available list of 7,000 pharmacists. Many a time, in spite of the data available, it is difficult to ascertain if a pharmacist is employed at the chemist or distributor outlet. If  there is a system in place, then it would far more easier to identify the registered candidates, said Rao.