This is the last in the series of unconventional career opportunities for pharmacy graduates. This is not the end of unconventional career options, but i have tried to highlight the best unconventional options available. Hope this last part is useful to all graduates. Mr.Eswar has requested to write about Medical Transcription but i shall discuss that in a separate blog. Here are the two career options ( Intellectual Property Management and Regulatory Affairs ) that many of the students would be interested to take up.

Intellectual Property Management:

Oh! I have heard this but how a pharmacy graduate can join IPM?

Intellectual Property includes legal aspects and not pharmacy. It is a misconception that IPM is only Lawyer's prerogative. Many pharmaceutical companies have established IPM as a separate division where scientists, including pharmaceutical scientists, play a crucial role. The role of a pharmacy graduate in IPM is related to identifying what are the patents available for a particular process or product, what patents have been applied for,where these patens are applied, how a non infringing process be made and providing this crucial information to R&D team. It is also important for people in IPM to help scientists and lawyers draft a well structured patent application as claims are the most important aspect that defines the scope of your patent. Only claims govern the boundaries of your patent application and therefore it is important to identify that the claims that are drafted does not infringe existing patents. Essentially,role of a pharmacy graduate is liasion with R&D personnel and help company design a proper patent portfolio for the company.

Regulatory Affairs:

This is an interesting area which deals with preparing documents for a company's product meeting requirements of regulations of countries in which product is intended for sale. The prospects in this field are quite bright as a graduate get exposure of regulations of different countries. Companies divide functions under this field as division dealing with applictions for the US market, the US market, Semiregulated markets, non regulated markets, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India,China) and domestic markets. The role of a pharmacy graduate is to coordinate with all other departments like, formulation and development, chemistry, manufacturing, quality assurance, packaging, and compile data for all these departments so that a dossier for aproduct is prepared that is submitted to regulatory agencies for review. Further, it also requires one to be updated with the latest amendments with respect to dossier filing as regulations keep changing with time. I have tried to highlight the basic points with respect to the above mentioned field as it deals with much more that what i have explained. Only practical exposure would give you the real feel of these functions. Nonetheless, i am sure this would at least orient you towards the available career options.

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