Pharma pricing body’s bid to get data from firms on medical devices hit a wall

New Delhi: The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority’s (NPPA) instructions to companies to provide data about medical devices—notified as ‘Drugs’ under the Drug Price Control Order, 2013—manufactured, imported or marketed by them has yielded only partial responses from a majority of the companies, according to the country’s drug price regulator’s recent notification. Most of the responses received from the companies either did not conform to the required format, or did not have the soft copy of the data sought, or had certain data missing from key segments.

In November last year, the drug price fixing organization had sought data from companies in a prescribed format. However, even after four subsequent reminders to provide the requisite data—like names of medical devices, price to distributor and annual price increase—most responses are inadequate.

Of the 25 companies that the NPPA had sought information from in order to monitor price movement of notified medical devices, only six have responded with a complete data set. Two of the 25 are not engaged in relevant areas, while the rest had key segments missing.

“All companies whose names are mentioned in the annexures are requested to take urgent action within 7 days of issue of this letter and furnish the complete updated information as indicated in the annexures,” NPPA’s notification, issued two weeks earlier, states.

An official in the organization, who did not want to be named, confirmed that they are still waiting for complete responses despite repeated reminders.

“We are compiling data on the information we have received so far and are looking at our next step,” said the official.