The Honourable Chief Minister Himachal Pradesh, Sh. Virbhadra Singh, launched the Extended Licensing and Laboratory Node (XLN) Software on 8th May 2013 at Shimla under the rapid replication roll out initiative of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, through NIC Gujarat and NIC Himachal Pradesh. Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister, expressed the hope that the software will help in cutting down the approval times and functioning of the Department will become fair and transparent.

The Honourable Health Minister, Sh. Kaul Singh, Honourable Forest Minster, Sh. Thakur Singh Bharmouri, Honourable Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Sh. Dhani Ram Shandil, Principal Secretary Health, Sh. A.R. Rizvi, IAS and State Informatics Officers, Dr. Saurabh Gupta were present during the launch function, which was attended by a number of other Departmental officers.

The XLN SW enables online submission of applications by retailers and whole-sellers of pharmaceutical products, e-file movements from field offices to head office, inspections and monitoring of legal actions, sampling and laboratory testing, mass dissemination of sub-standard or spurious drug batches to end-users etc.

The XLN SW has been designed and developed by the NIC Gujarat State Centre and Sh. Harish Advani, Sr. TD visited Shimla during the launch ceremony. He imparted a one-day training to the stakeholder departmental officials and traders prior to the launch of the SW and highlighted the significant features of the SW. Online licenses were generated and presented to the traders during the launch ceremony.

The proposal for implementation of the XLN SW has been prepared jointly by the HP Health Department and NIC Himachal Pradesh which was submitted to DeiTY, GoI  under the rapid replication roll out scheme. The necessary funding for hardware and hand-holding has been provided by the GoI.