Thursday, October 04, 2007
Pharmacovigilance
Businessworld
Also see the reasons why India is being considered as a centre for clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs and also the reasons for its attractiveness as a global pharmaceutical market.
GINA S. KRISHNAN
India has scored another first in outsourcing of critical functions in the pharmaceutical sector. Accenture and Bristol-Myers Squibb launched the pharmaceutical industry’s first-ever joint centre for pharmacovigilance in Chennai.
Pharmacovigilance is the science relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects of medicines. A pharmacovigilance centre processes and codifies adverse event data and generates regulatory periodic and aggregate reports on safety.
“The pharmacovigilance centre is part of Accenture’s Life Sciences Centers of Excellence in Bangalore and Chennai that Bristol-Myers Squibb already utilises,” says Eric Miller, spokesperson of Bristol-Myers Squibb in an e-mail response. Vioxx and Avandia are reasons for more stringent pharmacovigilance.
According to an Accenture press release, the collaboration will provide ‘end-to-end’ safety case processing. It will also undertake a medical review of the adverse reactions.
The reason pharma companies are looking at India is simple. Lower costs, easily available skilled pool of manpower and the advantage of time difference with the West.
Also see the reasons why India is being considered as a centre for clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs and also the reasons for its attractiveness as a global pharmaceutical market.
