Online medicines segment- structured guidelines required

Indian ecommerce has seen the emergence of many corporates selling medicines in online marketplace model, in the past couple of years. With lack of proper legitimate structure in place, this could easily pave the way for delinquent online medicine sellers. Setting up proper norms, designed to go with today’s digital era, is the only solution to serve public needs and curb the fraudulent activities at the same time.

Online sale of medicines: Current scenario 

In addition to established brick and mortar medicine sellers like Apollo, Medplus etc. who have also come up with their online stores to meet consumer demands, certain exclusive medical marketplaces like Mera Medicare, Mera Pharmacy, BuyDrug.com etc. have started their business by pairing up with local medical outlets.

With the provision of doorstep delivery of essential medicines, increasing no. of people are opting to take services of online medicine stores and marketplaces. According to Mr. Pankaj Gupta of Mera Medicare, patients suffering with chronic diseases like diabetes, blood pressure or cancer opt for cheaper and home delivery services for their convenience. With the provision of saving upto 60% on medicines, patients or consumer are naturally drifting towards online purchase of medicines. Other than these obvious options, the marketplaces are also witnessing a rise in purchase of contraceptives, bodycare and babycare products especially owing to their home delivery facility.

Procedures followed by online marketplaces

Lack of structured guidelines has led to a situation where the online marketplaces follow the system which they “feel is right”. The online medicine marketplaces are keeping the consumer’s personal as well as prescription details in individual customer’s accounts in a separate database. While some marketplaces ensure encryption of patient data to prevent from getting accessed, others are okay are to disclose it to the pharmacists.

Ancient government regulations in action

The government regulations that are in place are extremely outdated considering the digital modern era we are living in. The loosely bound norms that are currently regulating this massive ever thrusting sector of online medicine are a combination of Drug & Cosmetics Act, 1948 and IT Act. According to Mr. Rajkumar Popat, co-founder of Mera Pharmacy, being online service providers and thus unable to physically sign prescriptions while dispensing medicines; they try their best to comply with the Drug & Cosmetics Act, 1948 by accepting softcopies of prescriptions through email or Whatsapp and applying a two level check in place, in accordance with Section 39 of the IT Act.

The interpretation of the Drug & Cosmetics Act, 1948 and IT Act are contradictory when it comes to the players in this business of online medicine sell. According to Niranjan Reddy, founder and CTO of NetConclave Systems, the online players accept the softcopies of the prescription to comply with the Drug & Cosmetics Act, 1948 and section 4 of IT Act, but when it comes to any legal dispute, these electronic records are not authentic in the court of law as per the Evidence Act.

New regulations in the making

Every online medicine store and marketplace player are now in harmony to demand for a standard structure to follow and stay clean in their business according to the jurisdiction of the country and carry on their business in proper and legitimate manner. So, the drugs regulator of the country, Drugs Control General of India, has already initiated the process of structuring a norm to suit the needs of the digital India and has appointed a subcommittee under the chairmanship of the commissioner of Maharashtra FDA, Harshadeep Kamble.

With proper guidelines in place, this would not only enhance the customer confidence on the online medicine marketplaces, but will also provide more standardized structure for the upcoming players to follow and thus in process will prevent errant online medicine traders to function, taking up the opportunity of these jurisdictional loopholes.