NPPA to launch app with key drug prices
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."
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