The Ministry of Economy is unrelated to digital health

In a statement, the Supreme Council of the Medical System named the Ministry of Economy and the Deregulation Board as entities not related to the country’s health, which are putting pressure on the Ministry of Health and the digital health Organization to formulate guidelines for online sales of drugs

According to Iran digital economy annotation, the Supreme Council of the Medical System protested the activities of online drug sales platforms by publishing a statement and accused them of illegal drug sales. Although this council has named the Ministry of Economy as an unrelated entity, the government board last year mandated the Ministry of Health in the regulation “Supporting the production of knowledge-based and job-creating in the field of health” to cooperate with the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Determine how digital health businesses operate.

After the Ministry of Health did not fulfill its duty by the deadline, the Legal Vice President assigned the task of authentication of e-health businesses to the Center for the Development of E-Commerce and asked them to provide authentication services to the businesses in order for the Ministry of Health to follow the instructions. It is necessary to issue in this regard.

Finally, the deregulation board issued official permission for the activity of drug distribution platforms and asked the Food and Drug Organization to develop regulatory guidelines on these platforms as soon as possible. However, despite the follow-up of the Digital Economy Working Group, the Deregulation Committee and the 90th Commission of the Parliament, this instruction has not yet been issued, and the Supreme Council of the Medical System Organization has only issued a statement:

“The pressures that have recently been exerted by the Ministry of Economy, the Deregulation Committee and other unrelated bodies With health comes to the Food and Drug Organization and the Ministry of Health to develop regulations for the sale of drugs online, it has caused the concern that before the development of the required comprehensive laws, platforms that have had an unfavorable history in various types of drug violations and have shown that they are able to Maintaining the security of patients’ information does not affect the health of the society more than before.”

It is stated in this statement: “Currently, some platforms active in the field of internet taxis, without obtaining any permission from the Ministry of Health, distribute and supply drugs illegally on a large scale. The non-responsiveness of these platforms regarding the principles of drug procurement has made these places the best places for the entry of prohibited, smuggled and counterfeit drugs into the country’s drug supply network and harm people’s health.”

In response to this statement, Golrokh Davaran, the CEO of Snap Doctor, wrote in a tweet: “Snap Doctor has not and will not interact with any other suppliers other than pharmacies licensed by the Food and Drug Organization.”

Drug sales platforms have repeatedly announced that they only work with pharmacies licensed by the Ministry of Health and the Food and Drug Organization, but it seems that despite the pressures that have been put on the Ministry of Health to formulate guidelines for online drug sales from various economic sectors of the country, they still This ministry is not in a hurry to formulate this instruction.

The statement of the Supreme Council of the Medical System states: “The most logical and principled step to enter the Jirga of the countries where the online sale of drugs takes place in a systematic and legal manner is to formulate the necessary rules and regulations in order to prevent any possible misuse of the platform.

New for the supply of medicine and health products. The next step should be to review the list of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and define the position of the pharmacist in the online supply process of this category of drugs so that the drugs are provided to patients only through the direct agency of the pharmacy and the professional relationship between them is preserved. It is obvious that other steps in this direction should be done by examining and measuring the previous steps and modeling the experiences of other countries that have similar conditions to our country.