The high-powered Task Force on 'Enabling the private sector to lead the growth of pharmaceutical sector' has recommended to formulate a national innovation strategy to give fillip to R&D in the field of pharma industry. It also recommended to create and fund an organisation to support and promote biopharmaceutical innovation, R&D and national and international academia-industry partnership.

The Task Force also recommended to the government to identify and create a think tank to foster the spirit of innovation and to roll out the strategy towards drug discovery and development process with specific targets defined for each stakeholder involved. Besides, it asked the government to create a common platform to connect all dots pertaining to R&D and innovation.

The Task Force, constituted by the department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) in November last year, further recommended to create multiple Centres of Excellence (CoE) to promote industry-academia partnership for focused applied innovation. It also asked the DoP to create academic institutes to undertake research related to technology transfer in collaboration with R&D units in the industry.

The Task Force, headed by secretary, DoP, further recommended to promote interactions of experts between academia and industry. In this regard, it asked the government to provide flexibility in service conditions of academia to work in industry for short period and also called for industry representations in the academic institutions as faculties, academic councils, advisory boards etc.

In yet another recommendation, the Task Force asked the DoP to coordinate with all government schemes supporting R&D in pharma as availability of comprehensive information at a single point linking with relevant government schemes would help the domestic industry in getting timely access, clearances and development support. It also asked the health ministry to institute an appellate mechanism for domestic as well as global clinical trials at one level above the delegated authority.

To provide thrust to the pharma sector, the Task Force on 'Enabling the private sector to lead the growth of pharmaceutical sector' was set up by the DoP in November last year, which was headed by secretary, DoP and consisted of representatives from Planning Commission, department of industrial policy and promotion, department of science and technology, department of biotechnology and various industry associations including IPA, IDMA, BDMA, OPPI, AIMED, CIIO, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, FOPE etc.