Work on National Center for Medical Devices yet to take off
National Institute of Pharmaceutical Development and Research's (NIPER), the public sector pharmaceutical research arm, campus off the Sabarmati at Gandhinagar is all set to come up in 2011. Currently around 70 students are enrolled at NIPER Ahmedabad that is functioning from the Pharmaceutical Education & Research Development Center in the city.
On the other hand, not much has happened on the National Center for Medical Devices (NCMD), a project taken up by the government of India that was to be monitored by NIPER,Ahmedabad.
Harish Padh, Director PERD and Project Director NIPER-Ahmedabad said, "The NIPER campus is coming right across the Sabarmati at Gandhinagar near Palej village. It will have around 200 seats and will also offer PhD level mentoring. Work on the campus is likely to be complete within next year". Currently, NIPER Ahmedabad housed in the B V Patel Pharmaceutical Education and Research Development (PERD) Centre offers post graduate courses in pharmacology and related sectors. It has recently started a post graduate diploma course on the medical devices segment.
NIPER Ahmedabad was built with the aim that the institute would focus on the medical devices segment. The NCMD was planned as a part of that. This center will help develop good manufacturing practices and other quality control standards, dealing with time-consuming but standard issues such as sterilization, process validation and so on. However, work is yet to take off on that front.
Moreover, NIPER would also work closely with the Gujarat government and the Centre to co-develop the medical devices cluster for small and medium scale manufacturers at Sanand. "Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) has already started marketing the land to the units. We are working with the GIDC on developing the common facility center at the park that will not only provide know-how to the SME units, but also support them on quality control issues", Padh said.
As the country's medical device sector is evolving, the central government is moving in the lines of following the standards promulgated by the Global Harmonization Task Force, which employs a four-tier device classification scheme for both therapeutic and diagnostic devices.
Gujarat has around 150 medical device manufacturing units, of which some 30-odd have the European Union CE Certification. The state currently has a sizeable share in the country’s exports of medical devices, and is making a mark in segments like orthopaedic implants, cardiac stents and intra-occular lens implants.
