An online pharmacy is an app or website that sells medicines and delivers them to your door, after a pharmacist checks your prescription. In India, it is also called an e-pharmacy. Most Indian online pharmacies also book lab tests at home, and some offer online doctor consultations.
Here is how an order works. You photograph your prescription and upload it in the app. A registered pharmacist at the company checks it. Medicines that need a prescription are called prescription-only medicines, or Schedule H medicines in Indian law. The pharmacist checks that the prescription has the doctor's name and registration number, the date, the patient's name, and each medicine with its dose. If anything is missing, the order is held, and the company calls you. Once the prescription is approved, the order goes to a licensed pharmacy or warehouse near you. There, an employee picks and packs the medicines. A rider then delivers them.
Take, for example, a woman in Guwahati who orders her father's monthly medicines: a thyroid tablet and a blood pressure tablet. She uploads last month's prescription. The pharmacist approves it within an hour. The app shows a total of ₹1,240, after a discount of 15%. She pays by UPI, through the app's payment gateway. The order is packed at a warehouse in the city. Route optimisation software places it on a rider's route for the next morning. The app also offers to book her father's yearly blood test. If she accepts, a home sample collection technician comes to draw the blood at home. Next month, the app reminds her to reorder.
If you have no prescription, many apps offer a video call with a doctor, through a telemedicine app. India's telemedicine rules, issued in 2020, allow doctors to write prescriptions after such a call. Medicines that must be kept cold, such as insulin, are delivered through cold-chain logistics. Some apps can also link your prescriptions and test reports to your ABHA health ID, with your consent.
How are online pharmacies regulated in India? The government published draft rules for e-pharmacies in 2018, but it has not made them final. So the apps work under the rules for ordinary chemists, in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. They must use licensed pharmacies and registered pharmacists. Associations of chemists have challenged them in court, saying that they break the existing rules.
The business is difficult. Delivering a small order can cost a large share of its value. Many apps have offered large discounts to win customers. After years of losses, several have merged, and fewer are left. Some run their own warehouses and stock, while others pass orders to local chemists. These two ways of running an online shop are compared in marketplace vs inventory model.
How is an online pharmacy different from a neighbourhood chemist? The chemist hands medicines over the counter, and runs on pharmacy management software. The online pharmacy checks the prescription remotely, and delivers to the door.