Blog

Pharma Convigilence Course : Why is it necessary and its career prospects

Pharmacovigilance

Pharmacovigilance is defined as the science relating assessment and prevention of adverse effects. It could be any medicine-related problem as well. To put it simply, it emphasizes on drug responses that are adverse in nature. It also caters to medical errors namely over dosage, misuse and abuse specific drug. These steps are taken in order to avoid different toxic reactions on a patient.

Pharmacovigilance services work once data is collected from reliable sources namely patients, healthcare providers and medical literature. This data is vital in giving precise results in testing for new drugs and checking the adverse effects of pre-existing ones. In the future, pharmacovigilance will tackle two main problems. The first is the identification of risks associated with pharmaceutical products. The second is to lessen the harm caused due to any drugs.

The Need for Pharmacovigilance Services

There is need of pharmacovigilance services in every country. The reason being the difference between the occurrence of adverse drug reactions and other drug related problems in many countries .This may be due to differences in:

• Pharmaceutical Quality
• Production of  medicines
• Availability of medicines
• Usage of medicines in terms of dosage
• Compositions of local produced pharmaceutical products
• Usage of herbal remedies that may pose toxicological problems when utilized alone or in combination with other medicines.

Pharmacovigilance in Indian Scenario

The career in Pharmacovigilance (PV) demands basic qualifications that include undergraduate and graduate degrees in human medicine, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, nursing and allied health sciences. Direct exposure in collecting and organizing PV data, their effective processing, analyzing, and further implications are essentially required for the student who aspires for such a career. There are various institutions across nation where an individual can attend this course having duration of one to two years, following graduation degree with a suitable degree to achieve an initial orientation and exposure to some data or case studies. This would help them eventually in preparing for a real job opportunity.

Services in Pharmacovigilance refers to all kinds of medical improvements and analysis, evaluation, processing of cases, casualty identification, data managing and mining, appropriate use of medical dictionaries, signal detection, and other related activities and specialized services. The key aspect of this career is all about providing comprehensive medical, analytical, and safety services. Just like a hardcore knowledge base in the field of pharmacy or medical is essential, efficient familiarity in database creation, data management and data mining are additional key assets in such careers.

Career Prospects

Students can be assured for jobs in many pharmaceutical companies as drug development and safety processes are conducted on a timely basis. Professionals can also advance of their career and earn attractive salary packages; therefore, a career in pharmacovigilance has bright prospects. After successful completion of the Pharmacovigilance courses trainee will find better job opportunity in following sectors such as:

• Clinical Research Organizations
• Pharmaceutical Companies
• Regulatory Agencies like CDSCO and DCG
• KPOs
• Medical Colleges & Reputed Hospitals

Why should you choose pharmacovigilance as your career?
Pharmacovigilance is an excellent employment option for the pharmacy, life science, and medical graduates. It’s a scientific discipline that involves reporting and assessing the side effects of the medicine. Just after a therapeutic side effect is reported, the Pharmacovigilance professionals enter the event in appropriate databases, follow-up with the event to collect additional information and send these reports to regulatory authorities and other appropriate regulatory bodies.It’s mainly due to the function of Pharmacovigilance professionals that the medicines in the marketplace that consume are safe and all those that are identified as hazardous are taken off the market. Pharmacovigilance professionals continually monitor the safety of the medicines in clinical trials as well as the medicines previously being marketed in the market.