The Department Related Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare presented its 59^th Report of 118 pages in total on the functioning of the Indian Drug Regulator - the Central Drug Standards Control Organization (CDSCO) in both the houses of the…

Final working out and thereafter announcement of much awaited and long overdue the new ‘Drug Policy’ of India has now entered into a very interesting stage. This is mainly because of the unique combination of the following three key reasons:…

Along with the economic progress of India, healthcare consumption of the population of the country is also increasing at a reasonably faster pace. According to McKinsey India Report, 2007, the share of average household healthcare consumption has increased from 4 per cent in 1995 to 7 per cent in 2005 and is expected to increase to 13 per cent in 2025 with a CAGR of 9 per cent, as…

About 72 percent of the population and 135 million households of India live in the rural areas of the country. Many of them are poor.

Definition of 'Rural':…

‘World Health Day’ is celebrated every year on April 7, the day ‘World Health Organization (WHO)’ was founded in 1948.

Each year, on this day, people from all walks of life across the globe are invited by WHO to focus on a particular emerging health challenge of global relevance, which becomes the…

The Healthcare industry of the world as a whole with a size of several trillion US$ is growing at a fast pace in many countries for various reasons. The industry can be broadly divided into six categories as follows:

1. Managed Health Care, like the US and many other OECD countries…

Pharmaceutical innovation has always been considered the lifeblood for the pharmaceutical industry and very rightly so. However, many studies do point out that such innovation has benefited the developed world more than the developing world.

Product Price and…

Currently both China and India, the two most populous nations of the world are also the front runners of the global economy in terms of the pace of GDP growth. The economies of the two countries are greatly influenced by their respective sociopolitical environment. However, the economy of China is more robust ranking second in the world, against eleven of India. The dragon is indeed breathing…

Drug Price Control has remained the key feature of all Drug Policies of India, since their inception in early 70’s. Most of these policies continued to remain behind their times consistently, without any exception.

That said, the Drug Policy 1994 and the consequent Drug Price Control Order 1995…

On March 12, 2012, the Patent Office of India, in its landmark ruling, granted its first ever Compulsory License (CL) for Bayer’s patented kidney and liver cancer drug Nexavar (Sorafenib), to the generic pharma player Natco, broadly citing the following reasons:…

American Board of Preventive Medicine defines ‘Preventive Medicine’ as follows:

“Preventive Medicine is the specialty of medical practice that focuses on the health of individuals, communities, and defined populations. Its goal is to protect, promote, and maintain health and well-being and to prevent…

As reported by the 'World Health Statistics 2011', India spends around 4.2 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, which is quite comparable with other BRIC countries like, China and Russia.This has been possible mainly due to increasing participation of the private players in the healthcare…

In not too distant past, the stocks of the global pharmaceutical companies, by and large, used to be categorized as ‘blue-chips’ for their high return to investors, as compared to many other sectors.

Unfortunately, the situation has changed significantly since then. Most of those large players now…

Direct procurement by the Governments of various countries is attracting increasing importance not just at the domestic level, but internationally, as well. The systems adopted for Government Procurement (GP) globally are aimed at making a significant difference in the effectiveness of utilization of the exchequers’ fund and the quality of governance in the…

Even in couple of decades back, ‘Vaccines Market’ in India did not use to be considered as a focus area by many pharmaceutical companies. Commoditization of this market with low profit margin and unpredictable interest of the government/the doctors towards immunization were the main reasons. Large global players like Glaxo exited the vaccine market at that time by withdrawing products like, Tetanus…

Many thought leaders have been arguing since long that pharmaceutical R&D expenses are being over stated and the real cost is much less. An article titled “Demythologizing the high costs of pharmaceutical research”, published by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2011…

Healthcare industry in general and the pharmaceutical sector in particular have been experiencing  a plethora of innovations not only to cure and effectively manage ailments to improve the quality of life, but also to help increasing overall disease-free life expectancy of the population with various types of treatment and disease management options. Unfortunately despite all these, over…

Healthcare Tourism or Medical Tourism are the terminologies initially coined by the travel agents and the media when patients travel outside their national boundaries to seek either more specialized and/or cheaper but high quality healthcare available in other countries.

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In good old days, at the time of someone falling sick in the family, a friendly local general medical practitioner, who was also known as a ‘family doctor’, used to be called to provide relief to the patient from pain and agony of the ailment.

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Vaccines are one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions, which help preventing over 2 million deaths every year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines vaccines as:

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