PHARMA LITERATI

Eminent genetic scientists from various countries, who assembled at the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) in Chennai last week observed that the emerging specialty in medical science, Precision Medicine which renders a new approach to medical treatment, has very big scope in treating and curing cancer diseases. They felt that precision medicine and individual therapy, especially for cancer patients, is becoming increasingly possible and the challenge is collection and handling of genomic data. In the near future, precision medicine approach will expand in many other areas of healthcare management. The genetic scientists of India and abroad held deliberations on the theme, “Advancing Healthcare through Genomics” at the three day annual meeting of the Indian Society of Human Genetics held at the Institute. ‘This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular ...

The government will soon be announcing a marketing code for pharmaceutical companies to curb unethical practices, which will benefit the industry, a senior ministry official said. " The code will be mandatory, and will be for the growth and development of industry ", Sudhansh Pant joint secretary department of pharmaceuticals said at the annual general meeting of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) on Friday. Concerned with unethical marketing practices and illegal promotions, the government had last year announced its intentions to announce a code which will be mandatory on the industry. At present, the code is voluntary, with certain companies having indulged in unethical practices like offering freebies, gifts, and exotic trips to doctors and healthcare professionals. Pant also said that a dedicated venture capital fund with a corpus of Rs 500 crore will be floated to encourage innovation in the industry. Speaking at the AGM later,...

The nexus between pharma companies and hospitals in India is pushing up treatment costs while exposing patients to huge, unknown risks. The medical world is in the grip of a fierce debate triggered by the findings of two academic studies both related to the impact on us of statins, the group of drugs which act to reduce levels of cholesterol in the blood and are routinely given to those who have cardiac issues. An article in The Lancet , ‘ Interpretation of the evidence for the efficacy and safety of statin therapy’ , concluded that “ statin therapy has been shown to reduce vascular disease risk during each year it continues to be taken, so larger absolute benefits would accrue with more prolonged therapy, and these benefits persist long term .” It de-emphasised the side-effects from prolonged use of the drugs. On the other hand, an older piece and its more recent follow up in the venerable British Medical Journal (BMJ) stated that “ statins have no overall health benefit i...

Docplexus was founded in January, 2014 when Phanish Chandra lost his brother to an illness that took too long to diagnose. With this initiative, Phanish hopes to create a network of medical professionals who can quickly connect with each other to collaborate on patient treatment or identify the appropriate expert for patient referrals so that other lives won’t be lost due to delay in treatment. Here’s more from Phanish Chandra, CEO and founder of Docplexus. There is a profound story behind why you started Docplexus ; tell us about it. I am from a family of doctors and many of my family members are doctors. But younger brother Manish and I chose engineering over medicine and graduated from IIT. A few years into his job Manish fell ill and we desperately tried to diagnose his illness. It took almost 8 months to find out that he was suffering from Neurocysticercosis. However, by the time he was diagnosed, it was too late. We lost him in an unfortunate way. It was a big shock f...

The Medical Council of India (MCI) in February had framed stringent ethical guidelines to demolish the doctor-pharma nexus that undermines the best interests of a patient. Seven months later though, most feel the rules have had little or no deterring effect. The guidelines mainly elaborate the quantum of punishment for doctors, based on the value of favours or perks received from pharma companies. They state that the doctors found accepting gifts or monetary grants of any kind worth Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 would lose registration for three months. The tenure would jump to six months if the value of gifts is more than Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000. For anything priced up to a lakh, the doctor will lose the licence to practice for one year. “ Thanks to the guidelines, the entire unholy affair has only become more clandestine ,” said a senior physician with a leading public hospital. He said that at least three surgeons, including one from the public setup, went on an all-expense-paid tri...

In India, the mandatory marketing code for pharma companies would be having strong penal provisions in order to prevent bribing of doctors for prescribing drugs by drug companies. The voluntary code which was applicable till June 2015 has been allotted four extensions, according to a web posting by Brand India Pharma, an initiative led by Pharmexcil (Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council) and IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation). The provision comes in the wake of large number of doctors being bribed by pharma companies. The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers had come up with a Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) in January 2015 in consultation with industry. The code was expected to be reviewed after its voluntary application for six months. The Ministry extended the deadline till June 30 in spite of corrupt practices surfacing. Self regulation was promised by the industry, though the government admitted later that a voluntary code is diffi...

A Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament has alleged that four drug companies have bribed doctors across India to push their products, violating the Medical Council of India's code of conduct. USV, Abbott Laboratories, Macleods Pharmaceuticals and Sun Pharmaceuticals allegedly sponsored "pleasure trips" for doctors or, in some cases, doled out cash in violation of the code of conduct, Tapan Sen, a Communist Party of India (M) MP, wrote in a letter to minister of chemicals & fertilizers Anant Kumar. The department of pharmaceuticals said in a report in July that there was a need to take up the issue in the interest of consumers and patients as such promotional expenses extended to doctors had a direct implication on the pricing of drugs and affordability. In addition, the Comptroller & Auditor General, in a report in 2015, criticised the Central Board of Direct Taxes for allowing promotional expenses by pharma companies as deductible expenses while calcula...

When you last visited your doctor for a stomach infection, did your doctor warn you about the possible side-effects of the prescribed antibiotic, or was there a ` medication guide' in the pack to alert you? Probably not. When 10-year-old Ruchi was prescribed a widely sold antibiotic -ciprofloxacin -for her ENT infection, neither did her doctor inform her parents about the complications, nor was a medication guide available. The pharma company which manufactures the antibiotic too abdicated its responsibility to list possible side-effects. So when Ruchi took the medicine for 15 days, she developed serious skeletal deformities. The antibiotic meant to cure her nearly crippled her. Ruchi is not alone. There are numerous instances of patients suffering serious side-effects after taking prescribed medications, as they were unaware of the drug's possible adverse reaction . So are patients here being given the short shrift? It appears to be the case, as companies in In...

Technology is rapidly changing how people do everything; from taxis to food delivery, from dating to media consumption and everything in-between. Healthcare is no exception. There have been many visible ways in terms of technology impacting healthcare. From microscopes & stethoscopes invented hundreds of years ago, to MRI machines today, to the goal of creating a Tricorder in a Star Trek-like future, technology is making sweeping changes in healthcare and undoubtedly India will be a big beneficiary. The main drivers, today and in the future, are smartphones, always-on connectivity, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). In the way regular mobile phones became ubiquitous, soon most people in India will have powerful and connected supercomputers in their pocket as prices for smartphones and internet access continue to drop and become more accessible. Already many Indians are becoming more and more health savvy using technology. From searching medical terms , to booking an ...

Almost one-third (31 per cent) of those who claimed to be allopathic doctors in 2001 were educated only up to the secondary school level and 57 per cent did not have any medical qualification, a recent WHO report found, ringing the alarm bells on India’s healthcare workforce. The situation was far worse in rural India, where just 18.8 per cent of allopathic doctors had a medical qualification, the study titled ‘ The Health Workforce in India ’, published in June 2016, revealed. Speaking to The Hindu , Dr. Reena Nayyar, Secretary of the Medical Council of India (MCI), said, “I don’t think this report has officially come to the MCI yet. But in general, any person practising allopathic medicine who does not have a registered medical qualification comes under quackery.”  Interestingly, female healthcare workers – 38 per cent of the total – were found to be more educated and medically qualified than their male counterparts. For instance, among allopathic doctors, 67 p...

The Medical Council of India has decided to crackdown on medical practitioners who attempt to boost their income by pitching certain retail products to patients. Coming down heavily on the nexus between doctors and pharma companies, the country's apex regulatory body for medical education said endorsing a particular drug may result in the doctor being permanently thrown out of the Council. According to the latest rules framed by the body, a medical practitioner cannot endorse any drug or product of the industry publicly . Any study conducted on the efficacy or otherwise of such products shall be presented through appropriate scientific bodies or published in appropriate scientific journals in a proper way. The body feels the conflict of interest inherent in recommending drugs from certain companies is too blatant to be acceptable. "In such a case, the alleged doctor may face first time censure and thereafter their name will be removed permanently from the Indian me...

The recently notified 'new' ethical guidelines of the Medical Council of India (MCI) are being touted as a bid to punish doctors accepting freebies from pharma companies. However, these guidelines, doctors fighting corruption in the profession point out, will legitimise doctors' associations taking money from the pharma industry. While the guidelines elaborate the quantum of punishment for doctors on the basis of the value of favours or freebies received from pharma companies, they also include an amendment that ensures that doctors' associations are beyond the MCI's jurisdiction. Under the Societies Registration Act, it takes just seven people to form an association. In effect, what is barred for an individual doctor can be done as soon as seven or more of them get together to form a society or association. The guidelines are actually five years old, but were notified in the official gazette on February 1. Without them being notified by the governme...

Pharma companies may have to cough up huge penalties for unethical and illegal practices like offering freebies, gifts and foreign trips to doctors for pushing the sales of their products.  The government is set to make mandatory the uniform code of conduct for pharmaceutical marketing practices , which have so far been voluntary. The department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) is working on a draft which will curb unethical marketing methods and ban specific practices such as giving gifts and sponsor vacations of doctors by drug manufacturers, an official source said.  The draft mandatory code of conduct is expected to be finalized and put in public domain seeking stakeholder consultation by end of November, the official said. The draft is also likely to spell out the penalty and punishment for not complying with the prescribed code of conduct.  The move has been triggered by insufficient compliance to the existing norms by pharmaceutical companies. "Pharma compan...

A piece of Times of India (Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/10-docs-got-money-from-pharma-MNCs/articleshow/49268017.cms) reports that a scrutiny of income tax (I-T) returns of private doctors by Punjab Medical Council (PMC) has found 10 practitioners to have received financial transactions from well-placed multinational pharmaceutical companies. The PMC on Wednesday issued notices to these private doctors in Ludhiana and Patiala. The doctors who were allegedly indulging in the malpractice were medical specialists, cardiologists and gastroenterologists. The transactions range from Rs 6 to Rs 12 lakh in the 2010 to 2014 period. Despite the claims of Medical Council of India (MCI) of acting tough against doctors who receive money from drug companies for individual purpose, the practice has been found to be rampant in Punjab. Four doctors from Ludhiana and six from Patiala have been sent notices for violation of Section 6.8.1 of Indian Medical Council ...