CPhI Announces Members for Expert Industry Panel

CPhI Worldwide established an expert industry panel that will leverage its members' collective expertise to create monthly and annual reports exploring changes in the pharmaceutical industry. The founding panel members are: Ali Afnan, president at Step Change Pharma; Brian Carlin, director of Open Innovation at FMC; Bikash Chatterjee, president and CTO at Pharmatech Associates; Girish Malhotra, president and founder of Epcot International; Hedley Rees, managing director at PharmaFlow; and Ajaz Hussain, CSO and president of Biotechnology at Wockhardt, CPhI announced in a June 3, 2013 press release.

Each panel member was chosen following an exhaustive selection process involving industry peers and journalists to ensure that the panel has the appropriate expertise to independently and holistically examine global trends. In total, CPhI envisages harnessing the collective knowledge of between 12 and 15 experts, covering the entire pharmaceutical supply chain from R&D through to finished products. Additional members are expected to join the panel soon. The members of the panel will collaborate and draw upon their combined expertise to provide foresights into the global pharmaceutical industry. The panel’s first report on formulation and ingredients is planned for publication in June. The panel will scrutinize how the industry will change in the coming decade in an annual report to be produced prior to the CPhI event in October.

The founding members include leading experts on APIs and excipients (Girish Malhorta and Brian Carlin respectively) and regulatory experts (Ajaz Hussain and Ali Afnan). The panel will leverage the knowledge of Hedley Rees on supply-chain issues and the experience of Bikash Chatterjee on quality systems and the Asian market.