Mumbai: As part of ushering in good governance practices in the state, Gujarat has become the first state in the country to issue online licenses to allopathic medicines through the newly launched FDCA-mDMLA mobile app. The mobile application was launched on Good Governance Day on December 25, 2023 by the Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel.
The m-governance app will merge all the online platforms at one place for faster, real time access towards getting status of the application in a seamless manner. The mobile app is also aimed at helping ayurvedic medicine and cosmetic manufacturers and sellers also through this e-governance initiative. The m-governance system will have an oversight from a senior FDA official of the Assistant Commissioner rank.
“FDCA Gujarat is the first in the country to develop a mobile app to better deliver these services to stakeholders. The direct benefit of this mobile app is that under ease of doing business (EODB), around 6,000 manufacturers and more than 52,000 drug sellers of the state will be able to access their related operations, services and information through mobile anywhere at any time,” informed Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) Commissioner Dr. HG Koshia.
Dr Koshia further explained that the mobile app has been prepared for total 24 types of categories with main license related functions of online platforms like online Extended Licensing Node (XLN), drug manufacturing license application (DMLA), iDMLA, COSMLA, AYUMLA and CERTIFICATE through this mobile app.
“All types of digitally signed licences, certificates, approvals etc. provided by the system can be obtained through mobile and the applicant can know the status of the application made by him on the mobile. Moreover, all the services of the Right of Citizens to Public Service (RCPS) Act are also covered in the app,” Dr. Koshia added.
A mobile application for all the stakeholders including the manufacturers and retailers is aimed at bringing in accountability, transparency, inclusivity, uniformity and timeliness without disrupting the existing systems and protocols. Gujarat FDCA’s transition from its e-governance model to m-governance model will help all the licensees under one single platform to facilitate easy access to regulatory information, licensing rules, procedures, protocols and processes.
Earlier, all operations were done offline for which the applicant had to come in person to apply in the office, follow up the application and get the license. To do all the above operations online, the officials of Gujarat FDCA and National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India (GoI) then created a web portal cosmla.gujarat.gov.in to ease the issuance of licenses with transparency and stringent regulatory oversight.
Since its development in 2011, the Gujarat FDCA online platform DMLA software has enabled regulators to deliver efficient paperless services on time for granting product licenses for APIs and formulations under the allopathic segment. Gujarat also launched an online XLN system in 2007 for online grant of retail/wholesale sales licenses. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on December 1, 2022 had launched the cosmetic manufacturing license portal to make the licensing process transparent, accountable and less time consuming as part of Gujarat government’s good governance initiative.
