Online medical pharmacies have been growing as a market, especially in the past few years. People have been dependent on online shopping for almost all their necessities. From clothes and gadgets to groceries and meals, a majority of people depend on online shopping applications to buy them. Customers rely on online applications for their shopping, mostly due to its convenience. With their busy schedules, customers barely get time to visit stores and spend hours shopping physically. It is easy for them to just go with the alternative option and shop on their mobile phones while not leaving the comfort of their home.
Buying medicine is no different than this nowadays. Gone are the days when customers would wait in long queues to get their monthly medications from their local pharmacists. All they do now is download an online medicine ordering app on their phone and order online. Online medicine ordering apps are certainly a boon to people who have busy life schedules or older adults who cannot make trips to the pharmacist every month.
Why Online Medicine Ordering Apps are Getting Popular
Customers are finding online medicine ordering apps way more convenient than hassling to go to the pharmacist every time. Moreover, apart from shopping at the convenience of their own homes, customers also get the chance to avail discounts and thus get medicines at much lower prices than their original prices. Similar to what the principal consultant & director of BLK Super Specialty Hospital, New Delhi, Dr RK Singhal said, customers will flock to online medicine ordering apps rather than pharmacies if the same medicine is available at a much lower price online.
People who suffer from anxiety and insomnia might use an online medicine ordering app to order their aphrodisiac and Benzedrine medication to maintain discretion and privacy. Furthermore, ordering drugs online is beneficial for people who live in remote areas or for people who face difficulties reaching the pharmacy. Thus, for people like these, ordering online has its obvious advantages.
Risks of Ordering Medicine Online
While online medicine ordering apps have several benefits, we must certainly not overlook its concerns and risks involved with them. For starters, illicit or unethical online pharmacies can sometimes send expired or counterfeit medications or substitutes. However, this can happen in offline stores as well. But at least in offline stores, we can immediately point out the expired medications and ask to either change the drug or give a refund. But when it comes to online stores, patients have to go through the hassle of returning the medicine (if at all the online medicine ordering app has a return policy) and then followed by hundreds of emails asking for a refund if the customer care team of the said app is incompetent. Not to mention the delay in resuming the intake of medications for patients which could possibly lead to aggravation of their illness.
The online market for medications has led to the rise of fake drugs. Online pharmacies are selling look-alike drugs but with different ingredients. The patient, who is on the receiving end, cannot differentiate between the real and the fake and thus gets affected. While patients can recognize legitimate pharmacies in their locality, they cannot do the same with online pharmacies as they have no idea about neither the location nor the legitimacy of the store.
Online medicine ordering apps further encourage self-diagnosis and consequently, self-medication. People often take advantage of the lack of verification of prescriptions and illegally order addictive or habit-forming drugs without an actual prescription. Thus, the main disadvantage of any online medicine ordering app is the lack of adequate technical infrastructure which can properly monitor the buying and selling of online drugs.
Challenges faced by Online Medicine Apps
A significant challenge that online pharmacies are facing is the verification of the authenticity of prescriptions. The online medicine ordering app has no way of telling if the prescription uploaded by the customers is fake or authentic. Moreover, medicines need to be delivered within a particular time frame. This is why online pharmacies face challenges with logistics and shipping companies.
Another challenge faced by online pharmacies is proper storage issues. Some medicine needs to be stored at a particular temperature to make sure that it retains its potency. However, while shipping, the online pharmacies have no such assurance in controlling the storage temperature during transportation of the medicine or even at their storage points.
Online pharmacies are also known to be opposed by offline pharmacies. Recently, online pharmacies faced lashes as their offline counterparts held a strike against them, claiming that the system invigorates the selling of fake drugs as well as misuse or irrational use of medicine.
Solution For Online Pharmacies
Online pharmacies are still relatively newer than other shopping applications. In order to increase efficiency, a foolproof system must be endorsed on these pharmacies which might consist of doctors, hospital regulators, pharmacists, and consumers. When it comes to prescriptions, handwritten ones which are scanned and then sent to online pharmacies are often the source of confusion and misinterpretation. Misinterpreting prescriptions results in the delivery of the wrong medications and subsequently, unnecessary stress for the receiver. To solve this problem, doctors can start giving digital prescriptions instead of written ones to avoid any prescription errors.
As long as online pharmaceutical retailers do not show regulatory compliance and continue to sell fake medications, it is hard for the online medicine selling community to prosper. On the other hand, customers should do their part as well and make sure that their prescriptions are genuine. While online pharmacies are a gift for certain groups of people, they are misused by another group. Both, the customers, as well as the online medication selling pharmacies, must make sure that they fit themselves into the legal system. Genuineness from both the buying and the selling party will ensure the success and growth of the online pharmacy market.