Online pharmacies in India have significantly increased due to growing E-commerce in India. An online pharmacy is an Internet-based vendor of prescription drugs, and the term encompasses both legitimate and illegitimate pharmacies. Online pharmacies have been increasing in India, with the rise attributed to little regulation of the industry. The Maharashtra Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has also raided 27 online pharmacies located in Mumbai, Thane and Pune and seized drugs worth Rs. 2 Crore.
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Technology can help in meeting the healthcare objective of India. Indian government is planning to spend Rs 500 crore on computer literacy project for 50 lakh people over a period of 3 years. This would help Indian citizens to access government services in the fields of e-education, e-health and e-governance. Healthcare providers in India are also expected to spend $1.1 billion on IT products and services in 2014.
Legal status in India
The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, have guidelines on the sale of Schedule H and Schedule X drugs. These can be sold only on prescription and there are specific rules, including for labelling and bar coding.
It appears that electronic prescriptions should be valid especially in the light of the Pharmacy Practise Regulations of 2015 declared by Pharmacy Council of India in January 2015. In these regulations, “Prescription” is defined by regulation 2 (j)[3] ‘means a written or electronic direction from a Registered Medical Practitioner…….’ On basis of existing regulations it appears that a scanned copy of prescription will be perfectly considered as a valid prescription. However, whether such electronic prescriptions can be used to buy medicine from online pharmacies has been questioned.
Legal actions in the United States
The FDA believes that many selling illegal pharmaceutical products without prescriptions are controlled by organised criminal networks. In 2014, The U.S. FDA, in partnership with other federal and international agencies and technology companies like Google, took action against websites, some based in India, that were selling drugs to U.S. consumers. Mail Order pharmacies are regulated by the federal laws of the US and hundreds of them operate legally in the US. ICANN and U.S. regulatory authorities are also engaged in hot debate about blocking and seizing of illegal online pharmacies websites that ICANN is not very much interested in doing these days.