Specialty Ranbaxy, the diagnostics joint venture between Specialty Laboratories and Ranbaxy Laboratories, is planning to double its collection centres throughout the country.
These centres collect samples and send it to the closest Specialty Ranbaxy laboratories for testing.
Currently it has about 500 such centres in 200 towns. It has laboratories in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Mohali and transports about 2,000 samples every day.
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The company also does research and development in disease epidemology along with conducting international quality assurance audits.
It has conducted these audits for international pharmaceutical majors like Eli Lilly, Quintiles, Covance, Summum and has an upcoming audit for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It also conducts phase III trials for pharma multinationals.
Speaking at a press conference to increase awareness about accreditation of pathological laboratories, Vidur Kaushik, chief executive officer, Specialty Ranbaxy, said, "We are the largest clinical reference laboratory in Asia and we believe in quality licensing. Disease management is a science and standardisation is an important for the quality of test results."
There are over 90,000 labs in Maharashtra alone which are manually operated or semi automated.
"With the conditions to get a license to open laboratories as simple as getting a license for a shop, there is very little attention paid to whether the staff is adequately trained or not, he said.
The company has also approached the health ministry and has offered to conduct quality assurance workshops and training programmes.
Specialty Ranbaxy is one of the first companies to be accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories and also conforms to good clinical practices and good laboratory practices. It is petitioning the health ministry to make the adherence of these norms mandatory in order to improve the quality of diagnostics.