The Telangana State Drug Control Administration (TSDCA) has achieved a significant landmark in ‘Ease of Doing Business’ by taking its entire bouquet of services online and making its office literally go paperless.
Till recently, the Online Drug Licensing System (ODLS) of DCA was providing online licences for drug manufacturing and sales units. However, in the last two months, the entire range of services offered by the regulatory body has been made online, in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
The drug regulatory body has become part of the Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self Certification System (TS-iPASS), which means the process of issuing permissions, licences, certificates and other facilities from DCA are time-bound with enough internal checks and balances like monitoring and transparency to ensure quality of services.
Drug The DCA has also decided to make its entire drug inspection manual online, which means that drug inspectors will prepare their inspection reports during field visits to medical shops, blood banks, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies on the spot and upload their observations/reports immediately.
The initiative is aimed at cutting down time taken by the inspectors to visit facilities and then prepare inspection reports for permissions.
“The DCA is part of Ease of Doing Business of TS-iPASS, which means unlike earlier days all our services are now time-bound and there is better monitoring. Moreover, there is transparency at every level, which was not there earlier,” says Director, TSDCA, Preeti Meena.
For instance, according to the TS-iPASS charter, issuing approval to laboratories must be completed in 10 days.
“If the approval does not happen in 10 days, the monitoring authorities at TS-iPASS will start receiving alerts about the delay. The drug inspectors stand to be penalised monetarily for such delays,” a top official said.
Apart from issuing licences to manufacture and conduct sale, DCA also issues licences to blood banks, allows hospitals to stock narcotic drugs under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, issues good standing certificates and WHO/GMP certificates to a host of institutions.
There are 14 different services, including certificates, licences and permits that DCA deals with on a daily basis and all these are now available online.
“We have been training our officers on the use of the software for the last few years. In fact, there are two nodal inspectors who are permanently attached to NIC so that the developed software suits our needs,” says Meena. #KhabarLive
