Indian Pharmacovigilance Day 2017 conference held in Hyderabad

Indian Pharmacovigilance Day 2017 conference held in Hyderabad - BPD

The Indian Pharmacovigilance Day 2017 conference was recently held in Hyderabad. Dr J Vijay Venkatraman, MD and CEO, Oviya MedSafe – a global pharmacovigilance consulting and drug safety services providing organisation based out of India and the UK, was nominated as the Chair. The agenda was well-crafted to suit the contemporary professional interests of the pharmacovigilance stakeholders in India.

The conference was sponsored by Oviya MedSafe and had Express Pharma, Life Science World and CIMS as its media partners.

The conference started with a brief welcome address by Enrico Pedroni, MD, EasyB, Italy, followed by Dr Venkatraman’s address as the Chair to the delegates about the nature and purpose of the conference. The conference started to sail with the perspectives and anecdotes by Dr Ammar Raza S on the topic, ‘Changing Regulatory Market Landscape in Emerging Countries: Impact on Pharmacovigilance.’ This talk was followed by the next speaker Dr Arani Chatterjee, who enthralled the audience with his talk titled ‘Vaccine Vigilance – An Overview.’

The next session was Higher Functions in Pharmacovigilance, in which professionals from different verticals in the discipline of pharmacovigilance participated as speakers and shared their thoughts on specific high-focus areas in pharmacovigilance. The audience were enthralled with the knowledge sharing by Dr Nitu Sinha on the topic ‘Drug Safety in Biosimilars’ followed by Dr Mamtha B Nair’s seamless presentation on the operational topic "PADER Vs PBRER – A Comparative Analysis of Aggregate Reports". The session ended with the speech by Dr Ankur Arora titled ‘Safety Signal Detection: Do reporting Biases Matter in Today’s World?’

The audience were given an overview of the future of pharmacovigilance by Dr Vivek Ahuja, who deliberated on ‘Automation in ICSR processing – Is Artificial Intelligence the Paradigm Shift?’ a topic that the audience were eagerly looking forward to. The next speech by Dr SD Sinha showcased the intricacies and challenges involved in setting up ‘Global Pharmacovigilance in Indian Multinational Pharmacovigilance Companies.’

The last session of the day was aimed at unravelling the experiences of pharmacovigilance outsourcing from the viewpoints of a client and a service provider. The colloquium titled ‘Operational Excellence in Pharmacovigilance Outsourcing – Pros & Cons’ was moderated by Dr Venkatraman, with the speakers being Dr PS Karthik Babu representing the pharma industry and Soumya Padhy representing the pharmacovigilance service provider industry.

Dr Karthik Babu explained the pain points in pharmacovigilance which are expected to be resolved by outsourcing pharmacovigilance and also about the checks and balances to be maintained when pharmacovigilance activities are outsourced to a third party.

Padhy highlighted the benefits of outsourcing pharmacovigilance activities and also went on to emphasise that a service provider could add lots of value to a client, as a learned partner. The event ended with vote of thanks by Dr Venkatraman and the delegates left with the fulfillment of getting a bird’s eye view of all facets of pharmacovigilance.