Objective: To propose countermeasures for online pharmacies and promote the development of online pharmacies in China. Method: To summarize development status of China’s online pharmacies through literature analysis. The number of online pharmacies in China has increased year by year, and China’s policies have gradually opened up. However, there’s still imperfect situation in the medicine quality, pharmaceutical care, logistics and distribution, unopened OTC medicines, the online pharmacies are not docked with the social insurance, and other issues that hinder the development of online pharmacies. Results and Conclusion: Online pharmacies enhance corporate self-discipline, and establish third-party logistics, thus to improve the quality of the pharmaceutical care, gradually opening OTC medicine sales, achieve the docking with the social insurance system and others to promote the development of online pharmacies in China.
With the rapid development of e-commerce, the number of online shopping populations is increasing. At the same time, in order to ease the current domestic medical tensions, online pharmacies based on pharmaceutical e-commerce have emerged. Since the first online pharmacy officially emerged, the online pharmacies in China have developed for over 10 years. But their market acceptance is still not high, and is still at the initial stage of market development. So we need to analyze the Current Status and management of online pharmacies in China, and find the reasons of slow development to propose countermeasures for online pharmacies.
Online pharmacies refer to the electronic virtual sales market legally established by the enterprises that can realize the pharmaceuticals trade with individual consumers on the Internet. The online pharmacies are an important component of the medical electronic commerce, and belong to the electronic commerce model of business to customer (B2C). Their main functions are to realize online medicine retails and online pharmaceutical care, the products operated include OTC medicines, dietary supplements, family planning supplies, health food and medical apparatus.
Since China’s first online pharmacy emerged in December 2005, the number of online pharmacies in China has grown rapidly year by year, as shown in
As of March 2018, according to official website data of China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), there were 991 companies that obtained Internet Medicine Trading Service Qualification, including 54 online pharmacies were A-licensed, and their service scope was “a third-party trading service platform.” 244online pharmacies were B-licensed, their service scope was “to conduct medicine transactions with other companies,” and 693 were C-licensed, their service scope was “to provide individual consumers with medicines.”
As of March 2018, there were a total of 693 online pharmacies in China, but they were in uneven regional distribution, showing a pattern that there were more online pharmacies in southern regions and fewer in northern regions, and the number of online pharmacies was reduced from southeastern coastal areas to the northwest inland. As shown in
In recent years, China’s national policy environment has been gradually relaxed and online pharmacies market development has been faced with great opportunities and development prospects.
In July 2015, the State Council pointed out in the Instructions on Actively Promoting “Internet+” Action [
medicine”, online medicine sales and medical services of online pharmacies can further simplify the circulation, and reduce costs, thus to meet the diversified needs of consumers, and there are huge market development prospects in the future.
In January 2017, the State Council issued the Decision Regarding Cancelling the Third Batch of Administrative Approvals Implemented by the Centrally-Designated Places [
The market for online pharmacies in China is vast, but it does not provide the necessary development momentum. According to iResearch iUser Tracker monitoring data [
The reasons and problems concerning the slow development of online pharmacies and the low market acceptance rate deserve our attention.
According to a CNNIC survey, the primary issue for online transactions is product quality. Some illegal online pharmacies sell fake medicines, inferior medicines or even the contraband medicines. Due to the fact that most consumers lack the professional knowledge of medicines, it is difficult to discern the authenticity of online pharmacies, resulting in frequent occurrences of cheated incidents, and the consumers will blame related responsibilities to the entire online pharmacies market [
Medicine is a special commodity, and the consumers purchasing medicines are often for urgent use, and their needs for the medicines are timely. When online pharmacies arrange the medicine distribution, especially for the distribution to different places, it usually takes 1 to 3 days, and sometimes even longer, which is difficult to meet the eager needs of consumers. It is better to go to physical pharmacies to buy medicine. In addition to slow distribution logistics, the specialty of medicine storage conditions also has high requirements for distribution. In distribution process, the medicine must be kept in proper temperature, humidity, corrosion protection, and drop resistance, etc. According to Article 9 of the Provisional Regulations on the Approval of Internet Medicine Trading Services [
Due to the limitation of personal knowledge of consumers, there are often unknown cases of medication, so online pharmacies are urgently required to provide online pharmaceutical care, and offer the medication safety alert services to guide the safe medication [
According to Article 21 of Provisional Regulations on Approval of Internet Medicine Trading Services [
There’s huge development space of the Internet medicine trading market in China, but the medicine trading itself is strictly controlled by the national policies. The policy of “social insurance cannot be used for paying the medicines purchased from the online pharmacies” has become the biggest barrier that the industry can’t be vigorously promoted. At present, the coverage of social insurance in China has risen to more than 95% [
Integrity is an important factor for businessmen to attract consumers, and it is also the confusion of current consumers about online pharmacies. Legal online pharmacies should strengthen self-discipline to ensure product quality and service quality. There should be neither false propaganda, nor sales of counterfeit medicines. In addition, the product information such as pictures and text should be consistent with the actual situation of the product. The medicine should be delivered in a timely manner, there should be the agreement signed with the consumers before payment, if the medicines were not received within the term of the agreement, a full refund to the consumers will be conducted. The after-sales services of online shopping should be guaranteed, consumers should not find excuses when there’s any quality issue in the online shopping medicine, such issues should be solved timely, so as to reduce consumer purchase risk as much as possible, and improve customer satisfaction, and also establish a good image of online pharmacies.
If it’s insisted that each online pharmacy should build their own distribution system and achieve a wide range of regional coverage in China, the cost will be very large and difficult to realize, this will seriously affect the development of online pharmacies in China. Therefore, seen from the status in China, the most economical and scientific approach is to guide third-party logistics companies as soon as possible to establish a professional logistics team that meets medicine distribution through GSP certification, and ensure that the online medicine distribution is safe, convenient, and efficient, thus to realize the new model of “buying medicine from online pharmacies + third party logistics distribution”.
In order to improve the quality of online service online pharmacies on our hospital, we can improve the online customer services’ pharmaceutical care quality of online pharmacies, the improvement can be made from following two aspects: to improve the access qualification of online customer service, and conduct the regular training assessments to ensure the level of professional knowledge and the full play of online pharmacies. People’s medicine safety should be guaranteed; extending the online customer service time, thus to ensure that the online customer services are available throughout 24 hours, and that consumers can consult at any time to seek medication guidance.
From the perspective of long-term development, it’s inevitable trend for the online pharmacies in China to sell OTC medicines. Since consumers have a certain demand for buying OTC medicine through online pharmacies, online pharmacies also have great enthusiasm for selling OTC medicines. In this regard, the relevant departments of China should proceed from the following points: Continuing to deepen the new medical reform, promoting the construction of medical information, allowing the hospitals to circulate prescriptions outside, then is to promote the docking between online pharmacies and electronic prescription libraries of medical institutions to solve the source problem of electronic prescriptions. The regular online pharmacies should be chosen as a pilot company, some OTC medicines sales are opened by taking safety, effectiveness, stability and ease of use as the selection principles, the online sales of OTC medicines catalog should be developed, and the operating model for online pharmacies to sell OTC medicines should also be explored.
The establishment of social insurance self-service payment platform for the online pharmacies will be the inevitable trend of online pharmacies development in China. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to start from the following two aspects: The Ministry of National Human Resources and Social Security implements the national unified social insurance card to replace local self-made social insurance cards, thus to make an end of the current status that the social insurance cards cannot be used in all provinces and municipalities. This measure is to realize the one card solution for the national social insurance, thus to provide the foundation for the establishment of the self-service payment platform of online pharmacies social insurance. The CFDA communicates with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security to implement the docking of online pharmacies with the social insurance system as soon as possible, and implements social insurance consumer card for buying medicine from online pharmacies. It’s necessary to build self-service payment platform of online pharmacies social insurance, thus to facilitate payment of online medicine purchases by insured personnel and promote transformation of China’s pharmacies e-commerce payment methods.
With the rapid development of e-commerce, the development of online pharmacies has become a general trend, but it also faces great opportunities and challenges. It’s essential to fully play the advantages of online pharmacies and continuously solve the problems in development, thus to provide consumers with a safe and convenient shopping environment. It’s necessary for online pharmacies to continuously explore new countermeasures and innovate business models, thus to achieve better and faster development.
Chen, X.J. (2018) The Current Status and Development Countermeasures of Online Pharmacies in China. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 224-231. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2018.64019