Central govt to launch iVEDA portal for tracking drugs meant for export soon

The central government will soon launch Integrated Validation of Exports of Drugs from India and its Authentication (iVEDA) portal for drug authentication and tracking and tracing of the drug supply.
iVEDA portal developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will replace Drugs Authentication and Verification Application (DAVA) portal which has hit technical glitches hampering manufacturers and exporters from uploading data on barcode on secondary and tertiary packs of drugs meant for export and maintenance of parent-child relationship between them.
Taking serious note of this, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) had postponed the date for implementation of track and trace system for export of drug formulations with respect to maintaining the parent-child relationship in secondary and tertiary packaging levels and its uploading on the central portal till March 31, 2020. However, the requirement of bar-coding on secondary and tertiary packaging continues as per earlier notifications.
Having taken cognizance of the issues and concerns raised by the pharma industry with regards to trace and track and with specific reference to data upload issues on DAVA portal, the department of commerce constituted an expert committee. The recommendations arrived after series of consultations with the all the stakeholders led to the decision of developing a new web portal for validation and authentication of drugs export from India.
With the iVEDA portal being rolled out by third week of March, 2020, the manufacturers and exporters are required to upload data on barcode on secondary and tertiary packaging of drugs meant for export on the portal. Maintaining parent-child relationship between secondary and tertiary packaging is an optional.
The manufacturer uploading data on the central portal must have manufacturer code and product code allotted by GS1 India. The manufacturer can get CDAC codes in case he has not yet subscribed to get codes from GS1 or any other agencies. The manufacturer must have Digital Signature Certificate of Class-II or Class-III issued by any Certifying Authority (CA) in India.
The responsibility of the correctness, completeness and ensuring timely upload of data on the central portal shall be with the manufacturer. However, the manufacturer may extend the responsibility to anyone next to it in its supply chain i.e. wholesalers/ distributors/ retailers etc. in its supply chain.
The online system is envisaged to help manufacturers and merchant exporters to generate and utilise tertiary and secondary level coded data in a user-friendly manner. It has the provision to upload product and production data.
The test run workshop on iVEDA portal was held by Pharmexcil in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh on February 10, February 11, March 3, March 5 respectively. The workshop was attended by manufacturer-exporters, merchant exporters, contract manufacturer exporters etc. The objective of the workshop was to provide industry hands-on experience and get their feedback to make the portal more robust, and industry friendly.
The industry has appreciated the portal.
Said Nipun Jain, Chairman, SME Panel, Pharmexcil, “The portal is industry friendly. With this portal, the challenges faced the industry while uploading data on the central portal have been resolved. The trial run of iVEDA will help industry well-versed with the portal before its launch.”
Said Uday Bhaskar, direector general of Pharmexcil, “We wanted to make the portal industry friendly and simplified and in this process, we are designing the programme of the portal with CDAC. We have taken all concerns of the industry including merchant exporters into the consideration.”
“The exporters who were earlier working with GS1 code are not required to change the entire system. They can continue with data uploading on the portal with minor changes. Those who did not have GS1 code can also upload data,” he added.

Source : pharmabizcom