NIPER Ahmedabad to set up centre of excellence to boost skill development in devices sector

The government of India has mandated National Institute for Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) Ahmedabad to initiate a National Centre for Medical Devices (NCMD) for development of skilled manpower in the medical device industry. This would involve collaborative inputs from the industry to help build innovation ecosystem and develop human resources for the industry along with a testing infrastructure at NIPER. This would also complement the first upcoming medical device testing lab of the country at Vadodara in Gujarat by the end of this year.

The department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) for the last one year has actively engaged both the NIPERs and the pharma industry to build partnership in areas of education, research and development.

Says Dr Kiran Kalia, director, NIPER, Ahmedabad, “As a part of the government initiative to develop an ecosystem for development of medical devices sector in the country, NIPER Ahmedabad has recently signed two MoUs with leading medical devices manufacturers at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. This would go a long way to further collaborate with the industry.”

As per official sources, a total of 17 MoUs have been signed recently between seven NIPERs and pharma industry for academia industry linkages recently. Out of the total of 45 MoUs exchanged between central institutions, 17 are under pharmaceuticals sector alone. Academia-industry linkage is a significant development as one of the critical factors in building innovation ecosystem for medical devices industry.

High quality and skilled manpower is one of the critical requirements in the pharma sector today. This has gained further impetus as government of India is planning to expand NIPERs across the country to nurture manpower and hence boost domestic manufacturing of medical devices in the country. More than 70 per cent of medical devices are imported as of today which has impacted the development of the domestic industry.

Indian domestic pharma market is around Rs. 1 lakh crore and its analysis suggests that patent medicines constitute less than 1 per cent share illustrating poor accessibility and availability of latest innovative medicines in the face of growing non-communicable diseases like cancer because of affordability. This issue reiterates the urgency for India to have paradigm shift in its strategy to expand its leadership in drug discovery and innovation after post-WTO, TRIPS regime.

DoP has identified that academia-industry linkage as a basic requirement for translating research into development (commercialisation) and innovation; and also to fix accountability among the educational institutions. Further in India, the research and development in pharmaceuticals sector is spread across a number of ministries and departments viz., department of biotechnology, department of science and technology, department of scientific and industrial research, health systems research (ICMR) and department of pharmaceuticals.

Source: http://www.pharmabiz.com/NewsDetails.aspx?aid=93669&sid=1