Indian pharma industry eyeing 'tech independence'

Mumbai, Aug 16: Thanks to the pioneering works being done by the country's IT firms which have come up with a number of solutions to cater to the requirements of the Pharma industry, it seems the industry is heading for a 'technical independence'.

It is evident by the fact that IT exports from India have more than doubled in the last five years from 850 million euros in 1999-2000 to 2160 million euros in 2003-2004.

It is significant at a time when Indian pharma companies like Dr Reddy's and Ranbaxy are going global by spreading their wings on the foreign soil, some of the major global pharma companies like Pfizer and Bayer are anchoring their bases in the country for not only manufacture of drugs, but also for conduct of R& D activities of their products.

Interestingly, 15 per cent of the staff in the US pharma industries are now Indians. Also, the fact that India has got the highest number of FDA (Foods and Drugs Adminiustration of the USA) approved drug manufacturing plants outside the USA.

In fact, Indian IT industries are gearing fast to meet the ever growing demands of the pharmaceutical industry and thus lead the country towards achieving 'technical independence' in the pharma industry which is already on its boom. What with the facts like the domestic markety size stands at USD 5.3 billion, which is currently growing at 15 per cent per anum ; while exports, which constitute 40 per cent of the total production, have been growing at 30 per cent per annum for five years.

Talking about the role of IT in pharma industry Kalzoom Technologies CEO Uma Ganesh, told said, ''It should be looked at three dimensions that are speed, quality and customer satisfaction with innovative approach.'' And, the IT companies in the country claim to have come up with perfect solutions for all of them.

One of the major challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry is to reduce the time and effort involved in getting a drug to the market, which is also known as 'time to market'. But the increasing use of IT solutions in the drug discovery processes and the clinical trial stages have meant significant reduction in the time to market of blockbuster drugs. This has also been facilitated by the support provided by software solutions in the area of electronic data management, e-clinical trials and outsourcing of the IT requirements of R&D, thus easing the burden on pharmaceutical companies.

From bioinformatics to clinical trials, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) delivers solutions that help utilise information effectively and transform key business practices. While TCS is in the process of developing the 'Biosuite', which will act as an umbrella software solution for companies involved in the biotechnology and genetics industry, Infosys has come up with a 'streamlined clinical development' which will reduce the time and cost of clinical trial for the pharma companies.

Another useful solution developed by the Infosys being 'drug discovery informatics' which will help the pharma companies accelerate the target and thus lead to identification of the drug.

Zensar Technologies (a Pune-based IT firm) is working with its foreign partners like OBT Global and Impact to deliver ECDT (Electronic Clinical Data Transmission) for the pharma industry.

Recently, the company has developped a software 'Documentum' which is useful for the industry in automating the process of submission, said Kumar Gaurav, a scientist who is working with Zensar Technologies.

Keeping in view the requirements of today's pharma industry of the country, IT companies are working in a new branch of science, known as Combinatorial Chemistry. Explaining it, Mr Gaurav told sources, ''In this branch, we use molecular structures to identify which drug will have the desired effect on the target protein element which primarily comprises the DNA of human being.'' In the area of bioinformatics, researchers, drawn from various disciplines including biotechnology, molecular biology and biochemistry, are doing pioneering work in our company producing software solutions in areas such as genome sequencing and comparative genomics, said a spokesman of TCS.

An optimistic Dr Swati Piramal, who is the director - strategic alliance&communications of Nicholas Piramal India, said, ''By adding IT and Indian pharma, you can beat world on many benchmarks.'' Though accepting that 'how to innovate' continues to be a big challenge for Indian pharma companies, this innovation must have an economic pay-off as well, cautioned Dr Piramal, who is also the chairperson of CII Maharashtra State Council.

UNI