British Council provides funding to NIPER for medicine information

EPP News Bureau - Mumbai

The advances in technology have made a profound effect on the manner in which pharmacy and medicine are practiced today. The pharmacists and the healthcare professionals must be able to systematically locate, analyse and deliver the information in an efficient manner to meet the needs of the customer. With an aim to encourage this, the British Council has provided a catalytic funding to National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education & Research (NIPER).

Dr G S Gujral, adviser (Science) at the British Council, New Delhi emphasised that the Council expects the projects it is initiating to sustain. On its part, Dr Gujral said, the British Council has provided a catalytic funding to NIPER. He opined that the applications of science have to be disseminated to make an impact on the society.

Dr Gujral was the guest of honour at a workshop on medicine information held by the Medicine Information Centre (MIC) run by the the department of pharmacy practice at NIPER. On this occasion, he also launched the web page of the MIC.

‘‘Establishment of the Medicine Information Centre has been one of the major milestones in the growth of the department of pharmacy practice,’’ said Prof P Rama Rao, director NIPER in his welcome address.

Dr Rao stressed that the pharmacists need to strive harder in practice areas so that the other healthcare professionals start identifying their contribution in healthcare process. He also expressed his thankfulness to the British Council for its support to the development of the department of pharmacy practice - in the form of ‘‘Higher Education Link Program’’ between NIPER and School of Pharmacy, University of London, UK.

Over 25 participants attended the workshop with an objective to provide training so that participants can run a medicine information facility at their ends.

The workshop was followed by an open discussion in which the participants resolved the followings:

• In order to reduce the investment(s) on MICs, the existing centres in the country may consider formation of a network. One of the centres could act as a nodal centre which will house/provide access to the resources/databases procured from money pooled by various centres. NIPER, being a centre of excellence should take initiative in this direction.
• The activities of the MIC should cover not only the clinicians but also other stakeholders like the administrators, researchers, nurses and pharmacists.
• There is an intense need to create awareness amongst all the stakeholders on the existence and services offered by the MIC
• The participants also agreed that the next workshop(s) should have more focused themes and be held at regular intervals of time so that it helps in capacity building
• The hospital administrators may be approached to assign the duties of the medicine information pharmacist to one of the pharmacists in the hospital pharmacy
• In view of the increased dependence on data/information from other countries, the participants felt that a physician desk reference for India needs to be developed. This may be called InPDR.
• In line with the British National Formulary (BNF) an Indian National Formulary (INF) needs to be created.