New Delhi: Reiterating the commitment of the clinical research fraternity to addressing the growing healthcare needs of the country against the backdrop of a more favourable regulatory environment, Patients’ First & Research for Patients is the theme of the 10thAnnual Conference of Indian Society for Clinical Research (ISCR). The event to be held on 10-11 February, is expected to draw clinical research professionals from academia, healthcare institutions, not for profit organisations and the industry.
“Given the more patient-centric regulatory environment we have in India now and the focus on Make in India, this is an opportune time for all stakeholders of clinical research to engage in a constructive debate on how we can encourage more research and innovation in India,” said Ms Suneela Thatte, President of ISCR. “India has 16 percent of the world’s population and 20 percent of the world’s disease burden and yet less than 1.4 percent of global clinical trials are done in India.”
Clinical research is essential not only for developing medicines for emerging health concerns (such as antibiotic resistant pathogens, H1N1, Dengue, etc.), but also for finding safer and better medicines for well-entrenched tropical diseases such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular ailments. Clinical research is an integral part of the drug development process and the conference will focus on what needs to be done to encourage more clinical research in India.
The two-day event line-up includes panel discussions and speaker sessions focusing on the relevance and contemporariness from the perspective of clinical operations, investigator-initiated research, accreditation, ethics, training, regulatory, pharmacovigilance, medical writing, data management, statistics and career development in clinical research.
Leading up to the annual conference, four pre-conference workshops have been scheduled for clinical researchers and students on 9th February. These workshops will focus on data transparency, clinical research coordinator training, research methodology, and drug safety surveillance.