The pharmaceutical cluster must train specialists by itself
From pharmacy to production
Anna Romanova, "Russian Business Newspaper" No. 1-2015
In St. Petersburg, specialists in the field of medical education for the first time in ten years tried to revise the training program for pharmacy students and proposed to develop new training programs for modern specialists.
Today, training in domestic universities in the specialty "Pharmacy" is largely focused on the sphere of circulation of medicines. According to the St. Petersburg Chemical and Pharmaceutical Academy (SPbHFA), about 80% of university students go to work in retail, that is, they sell medicines in pharmacies. If we assume that, as the authorities say, by 2020, more than 400 modern pharmaceutical enterprises will indeed appear throughout the country, then with the current shortage of highly qualified personnel, the entire implementation of Pharma 2020 is under threat.
Today, about 59 thousand people are employed in the pharmaceutical cluster of St. Petersburg. The plans include the construction of more than a dozen new enterprises by 2020. According to the rector of SPbHFA Igor Narkevich, this implies from 2.5 to 4 thousand new highly qualified jobs only in production, not counting scientists for research laboratories for the development of complex biological drugs. Although the current medical education has a serious basis for the training of pharmacists, there is clearly a lack of bias in the required competencies.
– Today, the academy graduates about 500 specialists for the pharmaceutical industry, and this is clearly not enough. It is important for these few remaining years to have time to reorient pharmaceutical faculties to new standards of training, – said the rector. – There are many biotechnological drugs on the modern market, but practically nothing is said about them in any educational program in pharmacy. Students have a very vague idea of what monoclonal antibodies, peptides, and a signaling system are.
Experts believe that the new training programs should include genetics, molecular biology, the study of quality control and pharmaceutical analysis of biological products, serum vaccines, immunobiological preparations. There are also not enough courses in medical physics, computer science, statistics. According to Narkevich, the new educational programs involve cooperation between universities and enterprises, since the current level of training in universities does not meet the current requirements of the industry.
We need to talk about technical training separately – the same computer science is becoming an important component of pharmaceutical education. Modern software can save pharmacists millions, as the time of clinical trials of new drugs will be reduced by almost a third. For Russia, this is especially important, since now we will have to actively create our own medicines, taking into account the course on import substitution and opposition to sanctions. If by 2020 it is planned to increase the share of drugs of domestic production from the current 27 to 50% (in monetary terms), it is possible to imagine what pace the work will be carried out.
– Today, the level of training in the specialty "biotechnologist" is very different in quality in different universities, – said Alexandra Glazkova, Deputy General Director for Personnel of the pharmaceutical cluster resident company (BIOCAD). – We need uniform standards of education, because now Russian pharma needs international-class specialists precisely for the production of innovative drugs. And therefore, companies can take over part of the preparation.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru13.01.2015