Articles

Orphan drugs are medicinal products intended for diagnosis, prevention or treatment of life-threatening or very serious diseases or disorders that are rare. In USA, the Orphan Drug Act was passed in 1983 to give drug companies incentives to develop treatments for rare diseases. India does not have laws on orphan drugs though CDSCO defined orphan drugs as those intended to treat a condition which affects fewer than 200,000 people.

United States half pharmacies are located within drug stores, grocery stores, hospitals, department stores, medical clinics, surgery clinics, universities, nursing homes, prisons, and other facilities. The remaining pharmacies are considered to be independent or privately owned. In USA, average salary of pharmacists is 99000-140000 USD per annum. It can be varied depending on many factors.

Very soon we are going to see a huge gap for “right talent” in Indian pharma industry. In my view following could be the reasons and steps to be taken by industry:

1. Gender:
a. At +2 level, boys are for engineering, girls are for medicine, and those who fail to get medical seats opt for pharmacy. Hence there is an increase in trend of girls graduating out of pharmacy colleges.
b.  Most of Indians prefer their girl child to get married immediately after graduation or sometimes even when they are in their final years of course. (The latest demographic indicators provided by the health and family welfare ministry reveal that the national average age of marriage for girls was 20.6 years in 2008, up from 18.3 years in 2001. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-indian-women-push-back-marriage-age-1350166)
c. After marriage probability of girl continuing higher studies or getting into job is reduced.
d. Most of recruiters have bias in considering girls as they are uncertain on when these girls leave the job for the reasons of marriage, re-location due to husband’s place of job or maternity.

Simply, Artificial intelligence (AI) means machine learning and behaving like humans which ultimately facilitates works of humans.

Whether you do aware or not but in the modern world, we are all surrounded by AI. There are many examples of AI which we are using (may be unknowingly) in our day to day life. For exm, social media, search engines, product recommendations, Email filters etc.

ABOUT AUTHOR
Abdul Kader Mohiuddin
Department of Pharmacy, World University of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT
Obtaining an accurate medication history, keeping and proper maintenance of patient medical records, tracking medication lists are essential parts of medicine reconciliation and these are the processes where pharmacists play a vital role in. Without all these, prescribers may inadvertently make incorrect decisions about a patient’s treatment, causing harm if previously discontinued medicines are restarted, or if current medicines are omitted or prescribed at the wrong dose for the patient. Medical records are a fundamental part of a physician’s duties in providing patient care. Medical records can contain a wide range of material, such as handwritten notes, computerized records, correspondence between health professionals, lab reports, imaging records, photographs, video and other recordings and printouts from monitoring equipment. Poor record keeping is a major factor in litigation cases brought against healthcare professionals.

ABOUT AUTHORS
Mudasir Maqbool¹*, Mohmad Amin Dar¹, Shafiqa Rasool¹, Rabiah Bashir1, Misba Khan ^2
1Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
University of Kashmir, Hazratbal Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India
²Mader-E-Meharban Institute of Nursing Sciences and Research,
Jammu And Kashmir, India

ABSTRACT
The maintenance of a healthy liver is vital to overall health of the human beings. Since the liver is involved in almost all biochemical processes and there are many different diseases that will affect it. The liver is often abused by environmental toxins, which are eating habits, alcohol and overdose of certain drugs which can damage and weaken the liver and eventually lead to many diseases. Medicinal herbs are significant source of hepatoprotective drugs. Mono and poly-herbal preparations have been used in various liver disorders. According to one estimate, more than 700 mono and poly-herbal preparations in the form of decoction, tincture, tablets and capsules from more than 100 plants are in clinical use. From the literature review near about 178 medicinal plants are reported to possess a hepatoprotective activity. A drug having beneficial effect on the liver is known as hepatoprotective drug. On the other hand, drugs having toxic effect on the liver are better known as hepatotoxic drugs. The most commonly used parameters to assess the hepatoprotective activity are morphological e.g. Liver weight and volume, biochemical estimations, such as measurement of transaminase activity, SGPT, SCOT, alkaline phosphatase, serum bilirubin, total serum proteins, albumin, globulin and prothrombin time, functional parameters, pentobarbitone and hexobarbitone sleeping time and finally histopathological study regarding presence of necrosis, fatty degeneration and cirrhosis. In this review, we will briefly discuss hepatotoxicity and hepatoprotective agents.