CPhI Worldwide, organised by UBM Live, has named the founding members of its expert panel who will assess the changes taking place across the industry in a series of monthly and annual reports. The first report – on formulation and ingredients – will be available in mid-June.
The panellists are: Ali Afnan, President at Step Change Pharma (formerly of the FDA’s PAT team); Brian Carlin, Director Open Innovation at FMC; Bikash Chatterjee, President and CTO at Pharmatech Associates; Girish Malhotra, President & Founder, Epcot International; Hedley Rees, Managing Director at PharmaFlow; and Ajaz Hussain, CSO & President Biotechnology at Wockhardt.
Malhorta and Carlin are experts on APIs and excipients, respectively, while Hussain and Afnan are regulatory heavyweights.
Rees is an expert on supply chain issues, while on quality systems and the Asian market Bikash Chatterjee brings a wealth of experience to the table.
Each panel member has been chosen to ensure the appropriate expertise to examine global trends independently and holistically. In total, CPhI envisages harnessing the knowledge of 12–15 experts, covering the entire pharmaceutical supply chain from R&D through to finished products.
In addition to the six founding members, a further five global experts will join the panel over the next couple of weeks.
Our vision is to harness the power of CPhI's independent position within the industry
Throughout the rest of 2013, panel members will take part in the CPhI Pharma insight series of short monthly reports examining topical issues across eight themes of drug delivery; formulation & ingredients; R&D; manufacturing; packaging & distribution; regulatory compliance; contract services & supply chain management; and QA/QC. The monthly reports will also feature raw data, which will be compiled from the wider industry through the CPhI Pharma Evolution site.
The panel’s ultimate goal is to use the expertise of its members to scrutinise how the industry will change in the coming 5–10 years in an annual report to be produced ahead of CPhI Worldwide, which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany in October.
‘Our vision was to harness the power of CPhI’s independent position within the industry so that we could produce an unbiased analysis of the global pharma sector and help bring different perspectives together,’ said Andrew Pert, Brand Director, Pharma at CPhI.
Brian Carlin, Director Open Innovation at FMC
‘For the report’s content, we had to ensure we had the right mix of appropriate experts who could holistically – and this cannot be stressed enough, independently – examine the next five plus years’ worth of developments. The panel, we realised, was the crucial element in making the reports and platforms robust enough to offer advice that was globally relevant and practical in its implications.’
The annual report will feature a mixture of industry surveys and the collection of in-depth essays from each panel member, with experts being encouraged to predict how the industry will look and operate in the future from both an economic and practical perspective.
CPhI is now in the later stages of assembling the panel’s full line-up and plans to announce all participants before the end of the year.
