[1]

The central government in India is planning to mandate biometric identification for clinical trial volunteers in the country to bring in global standards and to weed out unethical practices in the industry, which is less than a decade old.Clinical trials are essentially research studies to test the safety and efficacy of a new drug by administering it on healthy human volunteers and patients. Unlike other forms of identification, biometric identification — which relies on the unique physical characteristics of a person, like the iris of the eye or a fingerprint — is almost impossible to fudge.The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plans to ask all clinical research organisations (CROs) to enforce biometric identification for the volunteers they recruit for their clinical trials, according to officials at the ministry. Data from the trials will then have to be made available for scrutiny by regulators, civil society groups and the clinical trial industry.
The biometric system, which is present in developed countries, will also help the Indian clinical research industry generate more credible data and ensure better care for the human volunteers