An experiment with online sales of prescription drugs was close to failure.

In the structure of online sales of medicines, only 1% is accounted for by electronic prescriptions

An experiment with the online sale of prescription drugs, which started on March 1, 2023 in Moscow, the Moscow and Belgorod regions, is close to failure.

Since March 1, a total of 147 applications for the purchase of prescription drugs have been issued in three regions. Experts stated this during the XII Green Cross conference dedicated to the state of the pharmaceutical industry.

Against the background of the colossal growth in online sales of over-the-counter drugs in Russia (in the first quarter of 2022, the volume of sales of such drugs through online platforms amounted to just over 1 billion rubles, and for the same period in 2023 they were already sold for 2.6 billion), the situation with online -trade in prescription drugs is virtually stagnant.

Today, 26 pharmacy organizations (out of 555 that have the right to trade online) are participating in the pilot project. In theory, they offer 904 international generic drug names for online sale. These include drugs for the treatment of diabetes, hepatitis C, HIV infection, cancer and other diseases. There are also restrictions on the sale of prescription drugs online: for example, it is not possible to purchase narcotic, psychotropic substances and their precursors, as well as potent substances, radiopharmaceuticals and immunobiological drugs, and drugs for the treatment of orphan diseases remotely. In addition, the online sale of medicines containing more than 25% ethanol, as well as those manufactured in industrial pharmacies, is limited. It is prohibited to order medications that must be stored at minus 15°C. The pilot project does not include the sale of drugs that are subject to subject-quantitative accounting, such as sleeping pills and sedatives, antipsychotic drugs, anabolic steroids, and medications for abortion.

However, as pharmacy market expert Alexander Monastyrev notes, in the structure of online pharmacy sales, only 1% is accounted for by electronic prescriptions, “and these are probably relatives of State Duma deputies.”

There are many reasons for this. According to State Duma deputy Airat Farrakhov, the capabilities of the existing ordering system are very limited. The Ministry of Health, meanwhile, believes that the experiment is not going ahead because Russians are poorly informed about it.

The procedure for ordering approved medications is indeed quite complicated. For example, a prescription is written using the international nonproprietary name, and the buyer searches the Internet for the name of a specific drug.

As Victoria Presnyakova, director of the SRO Association of Independent Pharmacies and head of the Alliance of Pharmaceutical Associations, notes, prescriptions in different pharmacy organizations “do not connect”: prescriptions issued in one region cannot be entered into the electronic system in another, and therefore it is impossible to check them. This means it is impossible to stock it. In addition, in Moscow, all prescriptions must go through the EMIAS system, and again, prescriptions near Moscow here become “illegitimate.”

“So far there are not even interim results of the pilot for remote sales of prescriptions, but we see that everything is going sluggishly,” says Victoria Presnyakova. — Everything related to the electronic prescription has not been thought through: if it worked, there would be no problems. In Moscow, everything is tied to EMIAS, it is not very convenient to work with it, including for the patient: the patient cannot compare prices in different pharmacies. First, it was necessary to clearly state the criteria, procedure, structure, but none of this was done. They just decided to conduct a pilot project, but no one was ready for it. At the same time, we have a “pilot” with an electronic recipe, and everything there is also “raw”.

Some experts believe that the experiment should have started with the remote sale of preferential prescription drugs. However, first of all, it is necessary to establish a uniform procedure for the sale of such drugs in different regions. Deputy Farrakhov believes that the experiment lacks regulatory regulation, but if all the shortcomings are eliminated, then medicines will become more accessible to citizens with limited mobility and those living in remote areas.

Meanwhile, online sales of over-the-counter drugs and health products are growing rapidly as people have become accustomed to home delivery during the pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic has taught Russians to eat vitamins by the handful.

So, according to market expert Valentina Marchenkova, today’s top sales are Omega, amino acids, collagen and weight loss products. Marchenkova notes that the fashion for amino acids is a new phenomenon; previously they were not among the top sales.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29143 dated October 25, 2023

Newspaper headline:
The Internet is not the place for a pharmacy