Thank you for those questions. There were three, if I understood, and I'll answer them in the order you delivered them.
The first was whether you could have a little bit more detail on the processes we've been undertaking and what we're doing around that. There are many and they are varied, but I will summarize them.
Regarding the comment we heard earlier about a moving target, while I might have chosen different wording on that, I understand what's happening. It's a new directorate. We've been trying to work with industry to develop things that go forward. As we do that, we've been evolving in our understanding of what's coming in. As well, industry has been evolving in their understanding of what to deliver.
We've now come to a point where we think that moving target has been solidified. We have SOPs--standard operating practices--in place in-house for any application that comes in. What are the details that are required to be there up front? What are the things we can ask for? When would it be considered efficient for us to go out and look for information, and when should we turn to facts? We're much more consistent in the decisions we make, and therefore we spend less time debating whether we should be proceeding down one path or another.
We're also looking to expand what we're talking about as our risk-based approach. So instead of just looking into Canada for the information we can have within our walls, we're looking to other regulatory agencies. We look to Australia, which has a regulatory framework similar to Canada's--not the same, but similar--to see what kinds of decisions they're making and how we incorporate them into the decisions we're making here.
We're looking to groups in places like Singapore where they are regulating traditional Chinese medicine specifically. If we can look to the decisions they're making and incorporate them into Canada, we'll be able to process things much more quickly.
Probably the most significant thing we're doing to decrease the burden on industry is, as I mentioned, putting forward electronic processing. If companies are able to point to data we've collected, which summarizes for them the information that we believe is pertinent, and make an application based on that, then it really reduces the amount of work they will have to put forward. If a company wishes to use a dose beyond what we have collected, or to come up with a claim beyond what we have understood from the literature we've reviewed, they're not prevented from doing so. They would just have to provide additional data in doing so. So it allows for the variation that any applicant would want to have, but at the same time it could speed up the application and decrease the workload for those who wished to follow those routes.
On the second question, regarding standards of evidence, there is what we always refer to as the totality of evidence. We look at everything. We look at clinical trials. We will look at that data when it's presented. We look at meta-analyses in which data is brought in from a number of different trials and summarized together. We look to cohort studies or epidemiological studies that look at how products are used in people but not necessarily with the same randomized crossover consideration that you'd have for a clinical trial. We look at traditional use. We look at animal studies. We look at all of the data to determine whether there are indicators that there may be associated risks and whether there are indicators that the benefits there would outweigh those risks.
People often indicate to us that they believe there is a clinical trial required for every product. Now we do require the submission of data showing that the product is safe in humans, for sure, and that it's effective in humans, for sure. But there is not a clinical trial on every product. We've approved approximately 110 clinical trials over the regulations, and we've approved approximately 7,000 products. So clearly the linking of a product to a trial is not what's going on. We're really looking at the totality of evidence, what's available in the public domain, and what individual evidence a company can gather and bring forward as well.
With respect to the differences in the packaging, the regulations around natural health products are more modern than the regulations around other product categories out there. When we brought in the regulations, we decided there were a number of things we should be looking at. Tamper-evident packaging is something consumers want. If you're buying something, you want to make sure somebody else hasn't been using it.
We applied it across the full range of natural health products. We did not, as has been suggested, exclude one category from another, because there have been situations in which there can be concern around anything that can be tampered with. If it's going to be put on your body or consumed in your body, there can be differences. So we've looked at this, and we may be able to come to conclusions that will work for people. But as we stand right now with the more modern approach to this than the other regulations that apply, we have said that tamper-evident packaging is something that in general, from what we have heard, Canadians would still want.