Pros (Advantage) And Cons (Disadvantage) Of Online Pharmacy In Nigeria

Online pharmacy has some pros (advantage) and cons (disadvantage). It Is similar to other online businesses. However, due to the uniqueness of pharmacy, the pros and cons are more dynamic than others.

Pharmacy

Online sales of drugs started in the late 1990s and began to spread rapidly around the world. With this rapid transition, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened a section on its official website under the heading "Buying drugs on the Internet" and emphasized that people should be careful against illegal online pharmacies with the guidelines it published.

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The advantages and disadvantages of online pharmacies have become a subject of great debate today. In order to understand the subject clearly, it is necessary to compare the advantages and disadvantages of online pharmacies in detail.

Pros (Advantage) Of Online Pharmacy

o Accessibility: Online pharmacy can easily be accessed from the comfort of your home with an internet enabled device. This is especially for people who live far away from a traditional pharmacy, the elderly, disabled people, and those who work very intensively. This system is both a very easy and a very fast method of obtaining medicine.

o Customer reach /experience: online pharmacy is able to reach more customers.

o Time saving: You can order your medication within minutes and get your prescription medicines very quickly. It saves you the time of going from one community pharmacy to the other looking for a drug when you can easily search different online pharmacies for it.

o Money saving: the shipping cost is much cheaper than traveling to a traditional pharmacy. Also, it is easy to compare prices online and go for the cheapest.

o Do business 24/7: most community pharmacies cannot operate all day due to limited manpower and security challenges. Online pharmacies solve that.

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o Build brand awareness: the publicity online pharmacies provide brick and mortar stores knows no bounds. It is cheap publicity.

o Privacy and confidentiality: Another advantage offered by E-Pharmacy is privacy and confidentiality. This system provides great convenience especially for those who are afraid of talking face to face with doctors and pharmacists. In addition, people are able to order medications without any drawback on special issues such as sexuality or adolescence that may be a source of embarrassment.

o Wide range of options: E-Pharmacy, which offers a much wider range of options than a traditional pharmacy, provides a great advantage to patients. It is not possible to find every drug in a physical pharmacy in a particular area, but there are many more drug options available in general drug stores.

o Provision of resource information

o Real time sales monitoring: with online pharmacy, the owner can monitor sales and use software to analyze their sales. Help in informed business decisions

o Data collection: Some online pharmacies share useful information about medicines and illnesses. It provides links to useful information, as well as important medical resources, universities, and government agencies. In some cases, you can sell this data.

o Long term cost: cost less to run an online pharmacy than brick and mortar store.

Cons (Disadvantage) Of Online Pharmacy

o No face to face contact: this will reduce good communication

o Lack of physical evaluation: physical evaluation of patients like vital signs cannot be carried out by the professional. Some like BP can be checked at home and relayed to the pharmacist for diagnosis. But that cannot be said of auscultation, palpitations, etc.

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o Regulation on prescription medications are violated: most online pharmacies will sell control drugs without prescription.

o Sale of falsified and adulterated products likely: not all online stores will stock genuine products due to the nature of Nigeria looking for cheaper products.

Self medication will increase: the major con of online pharmacy is the growth of self medication that will increase.

o Technical problems: Technical glitches can lead to problems in the store. These problems can range from promotion of control drugs or reduction of shipping fees or worse still expose patient private information.

o Lack of proper legislation and control: online pharmacy is new in Nigeria, so is the legislation and control. For now, these laws are somewhat wavy. Hopefully, it will improve.