Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has launched Ghana’s National Electronic Pharmacy Platform aimed at easing and improving access to Pharmaceutical services.
The platform will also provide Pharmaceutical services at affordable and competitive prices.
Dr. Bawumia said the Platform has been connected to the FDA data-base, making it easy to authenticate the drugs sold.
He assured potential users of the confidentiality of personal information and privacy of patient’s medical records.
The digitization of pharmacies will bring the nation’s pharmacies on one digital platform.
This is aimed at addressing difficulties associated with the search for medicines in pharmacies and, promoting competitive pricing while reducing the rate of drug abuse and the sale of fake drugs to unsuspecting members of the public.
Through a mobile phone, as well as mobile money interoperability and universal QR Code services, the Ghanaian public will be able to enter a prescription into the digital platform, select pharmacy of choice, pay for the medicines and have it delivered to the comfort of one’s home.
The e-pharmacy is a culmination of a challenge the Vice President threw at the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana in December 2019. The President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Samuel Kow Donkoh, said the Platform will help reduce the patronage of unlicensed drugs.
Dr Bawumia noted that easy access to narcotics and dangerous medicines will be reduced. He said the Platform will help monitor unlicensed on-line pharmacies, improve the pharmacy patient ratio and facilitate pharmaceutical service delivery.
The launch of the platform is seen as a major boost to the government’s digitization agenda. To test the efficiency of the platform, the Vice President ordered a drug on line and within 20 minutes it was delivered to him at the Alisa Hotel, the venue of the event.
