FDASmart conducts symposium on "BioPharma IT-Next Generation: Will India Lead or Follow"

Our News Bureau - Mumbai

FDASmart recently concluded its one day conference on September 27, in Mumbai. This one day forum focused on how bio/pharmaceutical companies are leveraging IT such as cloud computing, wireless mobility, new web collaboration etc. to deliver innovative competitive efficiencies in drug development life cycle starting including R&D, clinical trials, manufacturing and supply chain.

The one-day event showcased first of a kind, innovative solutions, best practices leveraging to information technology to get the business of pharma to the next level. A group of world class speakers were assembled for the event to address the IT role in enhancing the pharma drug business. All speakers from the various stakeholder positions presented on the same theme but with their unique prospective, a trademark strategy. Sudhakar Kasturi, business consultant-informatics, Thermo Fisher Scientific covered the challenges in pharma workflows from early discovery to batch release. According to him, each stage has its own set of data management problems that need to deal with different tools specifically configured for those workflows but enveloped within a system that ties it all together. Thermo Fisher featured their "paperless LAB" as well.

He was followed by other speakers including Gopal Rangaraj, chief information officer, Reliance Life Sciences who addressed the diversity of biopharma business that necessitates provisioning of differentiated solution to address. Arshad Mohammed director of Clinical Data Management at Quintiles shared their innovative technology solution to manage the operations and risk for hundreds of Quintiles CRO projects. Their unique system is in use across all Quintiles global data management clinical trial sites. Quintiles unique system features a high level dashboard then drill-down for more data fashion. Also speaking were Sandeep Saxena, founder and chief executive officer, Acton Biotech on IT role in genomics, Reena Gollapudy, lead consultant, Infosys shared her view on key aspects of enterprise applications and solutions, such as cloud-based offerings, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS models, solution architecture, data security, and system integration while Neelesh Bhandari, chief consulting officer, Digital MedCom on a provocative approach that we already have sufficient IT technologies, and that the real issues dwell on how they are utilised. Harvinder Singh, chief executive officer, Vsell Solutions/Intralinks Partner has presented on Intralinks customised solutions for global as well as Indian pharma companies in use for licensing, clinical trials and safety document distribution needs.

A lively panel discussion with audience participation followed which was hosted by Dipta Chaudhury, senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan India. Frost & Sullivan- the event Knowledge Partner along with FDASmart Inc. released a joint white paper during the event.