National Testing Services (NTS) Pakistan has singed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) to train and certify their medical representatives.
Director NTS Dr Haroon Rashid and PPMA chairman Haroon Qasim signed the MoU at a local hotel here Monday. Speaking on the occasion, Dr, Rashid said that NTS has so far conducted test of 2.2 million professionals hailing from different sectors of the economy in the country.
They are from banks, airlines, all universities, government ministries, oil and gas sector, cement, WAPDA, power distribution companies like KESC, local governments, etc., he added. He pointed out that NTS, a part of Ministry of Science and Technology has the services of more than 2,000 eminent scholars and professors of different universities who prepare curricula, standards and questions for various certification programmes.
He said that NTS will prepare a curricula for the certification of “medical representatives”, develop guidelines and standards for their training centres and conduct tests for them.
Dr Rashid said that NTS will also hold certification tests for more companies in oil and gas, chemicals, textiles and banks. The negotiations are continued with State Bank of Pakistan holding preparing curricula and standards the testing of bankers, he noted.
Haroon Qassim said that NTS training programme will prepare medical representatives for a career in pharmaceutical sales and make them a more attractive candidate to pharmaceutical companies. He noted that the curriculum has been prepared by eminent scholars from the academia and pharma industry.
Qassim said that this certification programme will not only provide a proper and standardized training to medical representatives, but will also improve their level of understanding of pharma sector and sales. “PPMA members have more than 25,000 medical representatives and we would like to have training and certification of all of them”, he added.
Senator Haseeb Khan, chairman Pharma Bureau Tariq Jawad and Syed Tariq also spoke on the occasion.