At a recently held ‘Chintan Shivir’ on ‘Drugs: Quality Regulations & Enforcement’, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya said that the health of the pharmaceutical industry is greatly dependent on effective and user-friendly regulatory mechanisms that can maintain high standards. “Ensuring such practices are put into action is thus incredibly essential for the industry's development,” he added.
Compliance with regulatory requirements is one of the main concerns of the pharma business. For product security and also efficacy, the conducting companies of the pharma make every effort to be in line with all relevant laws and regulations. Compliance also provides a control to curb the risks like product liability, counterfeiting and other illegal activities.
Pharma companies have to follow the numerous GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and GCP (Good Clinical Practice) requirements which ensure the safety of their products. The Indian Government has come up with many those rules which are strict related to the drug safety, clinical trials, drug pricing as well as also drug marketing. Pharmaceutical regulations are often very complicated and companies can find it very difficult to understand and obey the laws which would negatively affect the project development.
Therefore, the regulatory strategies are the most crucial ones of the production cycle in the manufacturing of medicines in the pharmaceutical companies. Nevertheless, correct regulatory frameworks can enhance the product development process and this ensures the products are safe and have the right quality simultaneously. In this article, we will discuss the three ways regulation can help the pharma industry to fasten their products development process.
Establishing clear regulatory pathways
Regulatory pathways provide a guide for drug developers to understand the requirements and timelines for drug, device, or diagnostic development. Pharma companies may prefer to set up formal regulatory pathways, which define critical milestones and regulatory expectations in order to make it easier to be in compliance and speed up their development.
They can establish different phases of drug development. In the first phase, the drug company may not have approached the regulators yet with its idea, but it can start formulating the plan for a drug and have pre-market funding.
The next phase would involve testing doses in healthy volunteers in order to determine appropriate dosing and tolerability. Further, patients with targeted diseases or conditions are enrolled at specific sites such as hospitals in order to evaluate safety, toxicity, efficacy, and optimal dosage. It can then be followed by clinical trials being conducted on patients at more sites and over a wider range of conditions. These trials would be approximately three to four times larger than the preceding trials in order to increase the number of patients that can be enrolled for evaluation. This phased approach can go a long way in setting the stage for product development.
Leveraging advanced technologies
By integrating the high tech solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and also Big Data, pharma companies can help to accelerate the process and resolve regulatory questions and problems quickly. AI is a very useful tool that can help to analyze the huge datasets, to detect different patterns and then to provide the needed information which is too complex for the human beings to process. Machine learning is used for the automation of different procedures including the drug discovery, clinical trials and also drug safety issues. Big data analytics is also a very useful tool for the companies to locate high probability in the pharma space. These innovative technologies will make a pharmaceutical company to gain an edge over the other competing companies.
Developing constructive public-private partnerships
Establishing public-private partnerships between government, regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical companies can help identify potential barriers and clarify the legal framework for an accelerated development process Such discussions also can help ensure the investment necessary to deliver a successful solution.
These partnerships can help bridge the gap between industry and government regulation, enabling manufacturing. By engaging in private public-private partnerships, pharmaceutical companies can benefit from resources and expertise that they might not otherwise have on their own, and this collaboration can lead to faster approval and availability of new products, logic goes ahead of regulatory requirements and a strong focus on skilled civil society -private partnerships Pharmaceutical companies can ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of their products.
The future of the Indian pharmaceutical regulatory market will depend on how nicely businesses are able to navigate the complex regulatory panorama and continue to be compliant with laws and rules. The authorities have taken steps to bolster the regulatory framework for prescription drugs in India, including introducing new rules related to drug protection, quality control, scientific trials, and marketing authorization. Companies should ensure that they may be aware about all applicable guidelines and feature structures in vicinity to stay compliant with them. This could be key for corporations trying to reach this aggressive market.