Online pharmacies seek urgent notification of E-Pharmacy Rules

A consortium of e-pharmacy companies, digital health platforms (DHP), met in Delhi today to draw the government’s attention to the need for a progressive e-pharmacy notification at the earliest.

"There have been over 20 stakeholder consultations since 2015 when we first started working on the draft with the government. There are vested interests in the ecosystem which want to discourage the new model (of e-pharmacies)," Prashant Tandon, founder of online medicine delivery platform 1mg, said.  

He further said that while the government had been patient in hearing out the companies, a sense of urgency was needed to provide clarity to new entrepreneurs, investors and vendors.

"Despite the hyper funding, the uncertainty around regulations has spooked growth stage investors, especially from outside the country," said Yogesh Shukla, director of Medlife.

The consortium stated that it was not informed of the recent changes to the draft E-Pharmacy Rules, as reported by The Hindustan Times. The report said that the updated draft does not allow e-pharmacies to store inventory and requires them to tie up with offline stores for delivering medicines. This directly impacts the business model of Chennai headquartered NetMeds, which works on this model.

The tweaks were made by the Ministry of Health in response to strong opposition from offline pharmacist associations, said the report.

In its previous form, the draft required e-pharmacies to maintain prescription records for a period of five years and allowed for a pan-India registration for e-pharmacy businesses with a national drug regulatory authority. This also eased the recognition of the e-pharmacy businesses by state governments.

"Currently our business model is open to interpretation for local drug inspectors and all of us receive notices. A central registry of compliant e-pharmacy businesses will provide clarity to the states as well as customers," added Tandon.

The consortium also said that it was unaware of the discussions held by a group of ministers which met in October to discuss the final contours for the draft notification. The draft notification was first made public by the government in August, 2018, following which there were reports that the notification would come into effect as part of the 100-day announcements by the new central government, post general elections held in May 2019.

The DHPs were represented by Prashant Tandon, founder of Gurugram-based 1MG, Dharmil Sheth, CEO of Pharmeasy, Yogesh Shukla, director of Bengaluru headquartered Medlife and Dr Varun Gupta, vice president at 1mg and representative from NetMeds during the meeting.

In a ruling on December 2018, the Delhi High Court had banned all e-pharmacies from selling medicines without a valid licence. The Madras High Court had passed a similar order which was later reversed.

The current Drugs and Cosmetics Rule, 1945, was formulated before the internet era and hence does not recognise the e-pharmacy model. The Drugs and Cosmetics Rule 2018 is expected to remedy the same. The government also had to seek an extension to the timeline of January 31, 2019, set by the Madras High Court to notify the new set of rules.