Regulatory data protection fundamental, lacking in India: Novartis CEO
The Hindu
Participating in BioAsia 2023, Vas Narasimhan spoke on how the Swiss medicine giant’s Hyderabad centre has grown into a 9,000 people strong facility and contributing to various aspects of global operations
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan, on Friday, underscored the need for regulatory data protection in India since that is something essential for pharma firms to undertake fundamental drug discovery.
“India does not have regulatory data protection. It is available in a number of countries, including China... that’s very important [as] our ability to protect data we put into regulatory filings in addition to the IP (Intellectual Property) is fundamental to us,” the Indian-origin head of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant said at BioAsia 2023.
Mr. Narasimhan, in an interaction with Industries and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao and later addressing the conference, said this pointing to how the national policy environment in the country is evolving and a few welcome changes ushered, including those pertaining to clinical trial approvals. “Important progress has been made... the new policy [on clinical trial] allows for much more speedy approach,” he said.
On the Novartis development centre in Hyderabad, he said that the facility has shaped into one of the few corporate centres of the company globally and has 9,000 people. It began operations about 18 years ago with a few hundred employees. As many as 3,200 employees work on drug development. Over the last five years, the company has doubled its presence here, he said, adding how the centre was increasingly executing critical work.
“We brought the core of our drug development, clinical trial operations, patient safety, Finance, people and organisation work, manufacturing centre oversight work... now we have multiple roles which are just 2-3 levels from me sitting in Hyderabad,” he said.
Describing the centre as an amazing story, Mr. Narasimhan said it is a “testament to tremendous support of the government, also the story of India. We can move up into innovation and high value part of the value chain faster because the talent in the country is second to none. To all the leaders in this room, keep investing in Hyderabad, keep investing in India and the talent.”
To the Minister’s query on the role for generative Artificial Intelligence in the pharmaceutical industry, he said while the power of Data Science and AI is going to transform drug discovery, the role of human mind will remain key.
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