Regulatory Approval Process for Drugs in Canada-A Challenging Task

Abstract

The drugs and medical devices for human use in Canada are regulated by Health Canada’s Therapeutic Products Directorate (TPD). Health Canada is responsible to implement the rules and regulations for the marketing of drugs. Health Canada’s process for approving new drugs is very slow and they give approval for drug products based on a complete review of safety and efficacy data. In Canada, around 70% of the new drugs were submitted over three months, and 40% more than one year, after their first submission. For drugs that were eventually approved to be marketed in Canada and in at least one of the other jurisdictions, the average delay from the first submission in either foreign jurisdiction to submission in Canada was 540 days. A drug approval process is completed by various applications submitted to the authority and the registration of drugs in Canada is really challenging. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the procedure from pre-submission to the marketing of a pharmaceutical drug for obtaining the drug approval in Canada.