India has seen everything being sold online in the past few years. Healthcare has finally taken the plunge and there are some innovative models providing on-demand services. These platforms have been able to provide accessibility and affordability to patients due to the larger market they are trying to serve. For instance, people can now order medicines through an app, get them delivered at home, and save money on the bill, to boot.

How does an e-pharmacy work? A patient has to upload a valid prescription onto a mobile phone application or website to place an order for medicines. The online platform directs the order to a licensed pharmacy, which dispenses medicines only after verifying and validating the prescription.

Recently, there has been much noise around the legal status of online pharmacies. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act (1940) does not have a reference to online channels, but e-pharmacies are working with the regulators making suggestions for including the same.

Pharmeasy and other legitimate online players have come together and formed an association — Indian Internet Pharmacy Association or IIPA — to initiate a dialogue with the regulators and bring in greater clarity. But, in the meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration in different States seem to paint every online platform with the same brush. And that shouldn’t be the case. There are different models, and the effort should be to differentiate the legitimate ones from those illegal.

Though the concern of the regulators is valid, we have, through IIPA, tried to explain how these concerns have been addressed by e-pharmacies.

On source of medicines: Every legit platform dispenses drugs from licensed pharmacies, which buy drugs from licensed distributors; both (pharmacy and distributor) are regulated by the FDA.

We also ensure all sales are recorded by patient details, drug batch number, expiry, etc., with a proper invoice which creates a digital trail right from the distribution unit from where the medicines are procured to the end consumer of the drug.

Self-medication: Every order is processed only on the basis of a valid prescription issued by a registered medical practitioner. There is no possibility of medicines being sold without valid prescriptions, and this can easily be audited and verified.

This ensures much better compliance (compared to the offline channel) with the law on dispensing of drugs.

Drug abuse: Presently, e-Pharmacies that are part of IIPA do not allow sale of restricted Schedule X medicines through the platform and would welcome more detailed guidelines before this is enabled. These medicines, which are commonly available in chemist shops where sales details are unfortunately not easy to track, are better handled through the e-Pharmacy model thanks to the robust tracking and recording mechanism. Hence, drug abuse should not be an issue at all.

Ensuring transactions from a licensed retailer, under the supervision of a licensed pharmacist only after verifying the validity of the prescription makes this channel safe and secure for the patients and also helps the regulators to keep a check on the entire network.

With use of technology, there are efforts to optimise and make the entire supply chain more efficient, which will benefit not only the e-pharmacies, but the entire pharma business.

It is time the government takes a closer and futuristic look at these models which are in sync with the Digital India revolution and support the movement to make healthcare services accessible, affordable and available for all.

The writer is co-founder of Pharmeasy, a technology platform for patients and pharmacies. The views expressed are personal.

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