The Drug-Pricing App : NPPA to launch App for drug pricing
India’s drug pricing watchdog is planning to introduce an app that will enable patients to check prices of essential medicines on-the-go.
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) will do this by extending its “Pharma Jan Samadhan” web-portal facility to smartphones to slash instances of drug makers and retailers overcharging consumers for life-saving, often expensive, medicines.
Developed by the National Informatics Centre, the app —“Search Medicine Price”— is slated for an android phone launch on August 29 by the minister of chemicals and fertilisers Anant Kumar. iPhone users can also expect to have this information at their fingertips within another two months, according to NPPA.
A test version has already been made available for public feedback.
In this version, patients can search for the ceiling price of all medicines under the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) on the basis of its generic name and the state they’re buying it from.
They can then enter the number of units (tablets or millilitres) of the medicine sold in one pack to see the maximum retail price (MRP) including taxes. Consumers will have up-to-date MRPs for all the medicines capped under NLEM 2011
and 2015, as NPPA intends on simultaneous incorporation of any ceiling price fixes and revisions on the app.The drug pricing body seeks to hold drug companies and medicine retail outlets more accountable to patients through its new app, according to NPPA chairman, Bhupendra Singh.
“Retailers and manufacturers will come to know that they cannot take consumers for granted,” he told ET. “Consumers can use the app before paying for a medicine to ensure that they get the right price. At present, whatever action we take against the companies, including recoveries, the consumer does not get back the overcharged amount he or she has paid.”
