China's State Drug Administration has now designated eight medicaltrading companies to commence a trial on the use of e-commerce for medicines, according to Chinese Medical News.
In January, government officials had said the development of medical e-commerce was a non-reversible trend, and that regulations were needed urgently to deal with this, as well as to prevent the sale of counterfeit drugs through the Internet (Marketletter January 15)
At present, about 40 out of a total of 1,100 commercial web sites in China are related to medicines. Under the new Regulation on E-commerce Trials for Medicines, only certified medical trading companies are permitted to set up drug trading web sites, while pharmaceutical wholesalers may operate such sites provided these are in collaboration with certain legitimate Internet Content Providers. The regulation also requires all approved drug trading web sites to employ qualified pharmacists and staff who have medical expertise.
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