Pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation Pfizer India announced Monday that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Mangalore-based Father Muller Research Centre to motivate young researchers to collect real-world evidence on drug efficacy and proven therapies from existing electronic patient records, and strengthen evidence generation. Electronic patient records are electronic records of healthcare information of individuals that are created, gathered, managed and consulted by authorised clinicians within one healthcare organisation.
The evidence on drug efficacy and proven therapies will focus on the prevention, treatment and management of diseases that are of public health priority in India, a Pfizer statement dated September 26, 2022, said. Cancer and cardiovascular disease are some illnesses of public health priority in India.
The fellowships will enable young clinicians who aim to pursue medical research to conduct studies with clear goals.
According to the statement, Dr Sonali Dighe, Senior Director Medical Affairs at Pfizer, said: “Advancing towards delivering on our purpose: Breakthroughs that Change Patients’ Lives, we have now partnered with one of India’s leading research institutes Father Muller Research”.
She added that this partnership will focus on capacity building initiatives including educational initiatives for healthcare practitioners and clinical research teams in several therapy areas, such as oncology, cardiology, anti-infectives, women’s health, dermatology and vaccines.
“We are certain that this partnership will be another important milestone in our collective journey to improve our collective understanding of disease conditions and overcome the myriad health challenges of India. This is one of the many partnerships Pfizer is exploring to apply science and our resources to improve people’s lives,” she further said.
Pfizer and Father Muller Research Centre aim to leverage the collaboration to build centres of excellence (CoE) in rare diseases. The Father Muller Research Centre will be the CoE for placing various real-world evidence (RWE) studies and conducting workshops.
In the statement, Rev.Fr. Richard Aloysius Coelho, Director, Father Muller Charitable Institutions said, “We are happy to collaborate with Pfizer India for all Research initiatives”. He added that industry-institution interaction is the order of the day which will immensely help the medical field and also helps us to develop new modalities of treatment, development of drug and devices and so on.
“This will help early diagnosis and better patient outcome. I am sure this collaboration will last for some years and long-term goals may be achieved. Let us strengthen our bonding and relationship for years to come,” he further said.