The recent order of the Drugs Controller General of India to bring the mushrooming e-pharmacies in the country under strict vigil and to act against the rule breakers has put many new generation entrepreneurs in the business of online sales of medicines in a spot. While the regulator suspects the online trade could potentially violate certain key provisions, including rules to ensure safety and quality of medicines, storage and dispensing norms laid out in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, under which the sales of drugs and pharmaceuticals are regulated in the country, the online traders say the norms can be better adhered to in the digital format and therefore, the regulator’s order will only be a dampener in the fast growing e-commerce perspective.
Online pharmacies have been proliferating in India with increasing Internet penetration and fast growing e-commerce culture. The Copy Rights Registry data shows that at least 30 new online pharmacies have been registered in the country in the last 24 months.
While the government is currently examining the merits and demerits of e-pharmacies, its views about potential violation of safety and quality rules of the law are valid. Since the online trade skips personal interface between the patient and the pharmacist, there are possibilities of drug abuse and other unethical practices too.
E-pharmacies, however, claim that sale of medicine is strictly based on prescriptions received online, and the prescriptions and corresponding sales details are well documented in their system for regulatory inspection. Plus, since they save on the infrastructure cost, online pharmacies also pass on a good percentage of their margin, which is anytime between 15 and 50 per cent on a conservative estimate.
While the regulatory inspection of stock, maintenance of storage conditions and drug recalls are still grey areas in online trade, the offline trade is no less in violation of the rules. They do not insist on prescription; there are hardly any pharmacists today in the pharmacies; storage conditions are often compromised and counterfeits and spurious products always find their way into the channel.
So the need of the hour is not to determine the good and the bad, but to bring in effective regulatory systems that can take care of the health concerns. It’s also time to use technology to further boost the access to medicines and transparency in the trade.
And the prescription aggregators, as is the case with other e-commerce players who do not develop an effective IT system that can take care of the unique set of dos and don’ts in the medicine trade, are to be certainly weeded out. Otherwise, it will only lead to further abuse of the trade.
(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 25-01-2016)
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Unnikrishnan is currently Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld at its Mumbai Bureau. During his two decades long journalistic career, he has received several media awards and recognitions. His articles on healthcare, life sciences and intellectual property rights (IPR) have been republished by several international blogs and journals.