New Delhi The laxness in branding medicines, a common practice for long but with serious implications for public health besides being an unhealthy business practice, might soon end.

A recent health ministry move to bar state drug regulators from granting manufacturing licences on brand names may force companies to queue up before the registrar of trademarks. In the process, several brands resembling popular brands and at times even misrepresenting their contents may get weeded out, too.

Mumbai Stung by widespread criticism of alleged lax standards in conducting clinical trials in the country, clinical research organisations (CROs), which conduct human drug trials on behalf of pharma companies, have resorted to technology to make the process more transparent.

For the first time in India, some CROs and a few pharma companies have begun filming the process of ‘informed consent’ — the industry lingo for volunteers in trials being informed of the risks and agreeing to the trial process.

Govt move aimed at making drugs affordable, tackling issues of trademark violations

New Delhi The government has decided to stick to the new market-based formula for essential drugs.

‘Poverty Line Fixed At 32, But Antibiotics Priced At About 60’

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave one month’s time to the Centre to come up with the final version of the drug pricing policy.

The government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it would firm up a drug policy by November 27, 2012, and then revise its essential drugs list under the Drug Price Control order to include 34

Players with integration between clinical work and data are going to dominate the post-BPO scene

Regulators round the world have become increasingly concerned about pharmacovigilance, the post-marketing surveillance of a drug for its entire life. Quintiles is offering this service to customers across the globe. About 500 of Quintiles’s staff in India are engaged in this work; global staff in the same operation are also led from India. Work in India has grown in the last four-five years.

Expressing concern over the alleged use of humans as guinea pigs by pharmaceutical companies, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre to submit details of clinical trials of drugs conducted across the country as well as their side effects and deaths, if any.

A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and A.R. Dave, asking the Union government to furnish details, also issued notice to all state governments asking if they were kept in the loop on clinical trials conducted in their states.