Union health minister addresses silver jubilee celebrations of NPPA 

Union Minister of Chemical and Fertilizers Dr Mansukh Mandaviya addressed the silver jubilee celebrations of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) yesterday.

Addressing the event, Dr Mandaviya congratulated NPPA for working more as a facilitator, and not merely as a regulator. He highlighted their noteworthy contribution towards ensuring availability and affordability of medicines in the last 25 years.

The minister also praised the Indian industries for continuously producing quality products. He urged them to produce medicines and bring innovative research with the goal of ensuring good health and well-being of the people, and not only for commercial purpose.

Dr Mandaviya assured Indian pharma companies of continuous support from the government. He highlighted the PLI 1 and PLI 2 schemes for the industries, which have helped in bringing about indigenous manufacturing of many critical APIs in the country. He also recalled the positive contribution of Indian pharma companies during the COVID crisis and highlighted the importance of cooperation and collaboration between the government and industry in bringing quality healthcare to the masses.

Bhagwanth Khuba, the guest of honour at the celebration, stated, “NPPA ensures availability of affordable medicines without harming the interests of the industry.”

He also expressed his optimism that with the launch of the two applications, NPPA is expected to further carry on its work in a smooth and efficient manner in the coming years.

At the inaugural session, Integrated Pharmaceutical Database Management System 2.0 (IPDMS 2.0) and Pharma Sahi Daam 2.0 apps were launched.

IPDMS 2.0 is an integrated responsive cloud-based application developed by NPPA with technical support from the Centre for Advance Computing (C-DAC). It is envisaged to optimise synergies in operations in order to promote government’s thrust on ‘ease of doing business’ as it would provide a single window for submissions of various forms as mandated under Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013. It would also enable paperless functioning of NPPA and facilitate the stakeholders to connect with the national pharma pricing regulator from across the country.

Pharma Sahi Daam 2.0 app will have updated features like speech recognition; availability in Hindi and English; share button and bookmarking medicines. This version of pharma Sahi Daam also has facility for launching complaints by consumer through the consumer complaint handling module. The app will be available in both iOS and Android versions.

Apart from it, a publication titled ‘An overview of Drug Pricing @ NPPA 25 year Odyssey’ was also launched at the inaugural session. The publication chronicles not only the 25-year journey of NPPA, but also highlights the evolution of the drug regulatory system in the country with special emphasis on pricing regulation.

Stakeholders from the pharma and MedTech devices industry, central and state governments, price monitoring and resource units, civil society, patient advocacy groups, pharma research and academic institutions and think-tanks from all over the country were also present on the occasion.