Yesterday morning, the 14th of January, a meeting to review the challenges in the field of medicine and electronic prescription was held by the Health Commission and the Knowledge-Based Transformation, Innovation and Productivity Commission of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce at the Tehran Chamber.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, in this meeting, electronic health platforms discussed their challenges and issues in front of the representatives of the Ministry of Health and the Food and Drug Organization.
The online sale of medicine is one of the issues that the legislator and guardian of this field, the Ministry of Health, looks at with doubt. Of course, in most countries of the world, the sale of drugs online is limited to the sale of supplements and vitamins.
The size of the country’s health market is so large that several online medical platforms have emerged from the private sector in recent years. These platforms provide extensive medical services through the Internet, and selling or rather delivering medicine is one of their services.
The private sector believes in the absence of clear rules and regulations in this area, and on the other hand, the Ministry of Health, the Food and Drug Organization, and other institutions have sometimes had a coercive approach with the platforms, and from time to time there is talk in the media of banning the sale or supply of drugs online.
If we want to summarize the Ministry of Health’s most important concerns as the responsible authority in this field, we can point to the quality and safety control of online drug supply, prevention of the sale of counterfeit and unauthorized drugs, regulations related to prescriptions and pharmaceutical consultation, privacy and data security, and the distribution and transportation of drugs.
In yesterday’s session, organized by the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, the two parties involved in this field, namely the legislator and the platforms, sat down together to discuss and converse about their challenges.
At the beginning of this meeting, Arash Mahboubi, a member of the board of directors of the Tehran Pharmacists Association, said: “Drug sales in the country is the specialty of the Food and Drug Organization. Finally, this issue should be decided in the Food and Drug Organization. Per capita, the number of traditional pharmacies is one for every 4,000 people, which has surpassed world standards.
Mahboubi pointed out that the proliferation of pharmacies in the country was caused by the ruler and is not favorable to this association, and stated: “The pricing method is different in Iran. We have one of the cheapest medicines in the world and the quality of our medicine is higher than the world average. Every piece of our medical system is taken from the same place, part from NHS England and part from France. Asian countries have the most similar model to us. “We are not in a good position in electronic prescriptions and we have put people’s health at risk.”
Referring to the problems of health platforms, Mehdi Khodadadi, the CEO of Dr Saina, stated: “The private sector is transparent in the field of medicine and electronic prescription, but unfortunately the regulator puts pressure on us as a tool through the law that we follow. We also believe that the platform does not have the authority to provide medicine and we do not do this. Our view is to act in accordance with the law.”
Shahram Haj Ghorbani, secretary of the Information Technology Federation of the Tehran Chamber, said: “In this area (online sale of drugs), only delivery is done. Like what happened in the food sector by Snapfood.
Referring to the difficulties and challenges of online drug sales, Mirkarimi, the CEO of Pezeshket, said: “We are asking for help from the legislators and we were planning to enter the field of drug distribution, but we did not enter due to fear and threats.”
In the continuation of the ceremony, Nima Fazeli, the CEO of DoctorDoctor, said: “The definition of the platform is clear and we (platforms) are not going to solve all the problems in the health field. This view is wrong. He went on to say that instead of sitting together and identifying what the people’s needs are based on our own understanding, we should research this issue in order to provide a solution to the challenge.
One of the concerns of the representatives of the Ministry of Health in this meeting was that the health platforms of Western benchmarks were taken as their model, while Iran’s pharmaceutical ecosystem is more similar to Asian countries. In this regard, Fazli stated: Pakistan, India and UAE have the most similar online pharmaceutical ecosystem to Iran. Countries like us are not only Amazon and America.
Hossein Vatanpour, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Knowledge-Based Companies in the Health Sector of Tehran, continued: “There are three good features in information technology. Low cost, high speed and ease of access. In America, it is not the case that we have so many internet drug actors. But in our country of 80 million people, there are so many actors selling drugs online. One of the concerns about the drug is that there are too many drug similarities and there is a need for face-to-face counseling of the patient by the pharmacy; “In online sales, we cannot contact the patient.”
Vatanpour clarified: When Snape came, he was only traveling, but now he does everything. There are many nuances and variables in the field of medicine and it is not like the distribution of food and goods. Go and see the complaint files in the face-to-face sales of drugs. There are many challenges in this area, but they can be solved. We must go to the government and solve our problem.
Farzin Fardis, a member of the board of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, referring to the government sector’s resistance to platforms and startups in this area, said: “I believe that we should not talk in meetings in such a way that the path to good is closed.” Referring to the speech of one of the representatives of the Ministry of Health in this meeting.
Fardis said that doctors take an oath at the end of their graduation to save people’s lives, so they have the right to provide these services, and because the platforms do not swear like doctors, they are not qualified, he said: “Why do you say that platforms are not sworn to protect people’s lives and that people’s lives are not important to them? Didn’t platforms like Digikala help save people’s lives and distribute masks throughout the country at a fair price during the Corona virus?!”
At the end of this meeting, Mina Azhugh, head of the department of pharmacies and distribution companies of the Food and Drug Organization of the Ministry of Health, said: “So far, we have not seen any requests for permission and compliance with the framework of the Food and Drug Organization being registered by the platforms.
Right now we have 5 laws based on which the platforms are acting against the law. So far, no platform has approached the FDA to accept our framework. We can’t keep looking for platforms and they have to refer to us. “Since we came to work, we have tried to cooperate with platforms.”
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