• Regulators will be able to confirm authenticity of drugs sold, Bawumia
• 45 pharmacies are currently piloting the e-pharmacy
Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia has hinted the introduction of the E-Pharmacy will make Ghana the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to implement the innovation.
According to him, the e-pharmacy will ensure pharmacies in the country are digitized on a platform to enable consumers gain access to purchase medicines.
Delivering a public lecture at the Ashesi University on November 2, 2021, the vice president said the e-pharmacy will also see to it that regulators are able to confirm the authenticity of drugs purchased and distributed.
“To address the challenge of patients or person facing difficulties when trying to find medicines in pharmacies, I challenged the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana to digitize the operations of pharmacies in Ghana. Following this and working with my office, the Pharmacy Council in collaboration with the private sector has completed work on a digital platform; E-Pharmacy for all pharmacies in Ghana and a pilot of 45 pharmacies is currently ongoing.”
“Basically, the digital E-Pharmacy platform will offer the opportunity to everyone through a mobile phone to upload your prescriptions and find out which pharmacies near you have the medicines. Secondly, you can compare the prices for the same drug offered by different prices so that you can buy from the lowest priced pharmacies,” he explained.
The vice president added, “The E-Pharmacy will enable Ghana to address the issue of drug abuse. Those prescribed controlled medicines like Tramadol for example will only be given a one-time CODE sent via SMS (once the prescription is uploaded) to use at the pharmacy.”
“The e-pharmacy platform will also check fake or counterfeit medicines because the platform will be linked to the FDA which will monitor the batch numbers of all products in real-time. Any drug for which the FDA does not have a batch number will be classified as fake,” he continued.
Meanwhile the yet-to-launched E-Pharmacy digital platform, according to the vice president will fully kick off by the end of 2021.
The platform will make Ghana the first country in sub-Sahara to apply it on the national scale and one of few countries globally to implement the innovation.
