New Drugs to hit market faster as Govt. tweaks trial policy

As clinical trials (testing on humans) has virtually halted, the govt. is making an effort to make the relevant policy more pragmatic. The advantage of the new policy, sources said, is that the time required for drug development can be reduced and new medicines can be launched faster: India does'nt have enough capacity to deal with the requirements of Phase I and Phase II trials, often adding to delays and cases of misconduct by the investigators. Experts said the new policy will give an option to drug innovators to shift trials to countries like Europe, U.S., Canada, China, Malaysia and Turkey which not only have greater expertise in conducting phase I and II trials, but also have shorter turnaround times.