The global ePharmacy market size was valued at USD 35 billion in 2018 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period. By 2023, it is predicted that the market will grow to reach around 128 billion dollars. Currently there are 35000 active online pharmacy players are there in global market. 

            Countries like UK are putting more efforts in the implementation of the e prescription. The NHS hospitals in England are planning to go paperless by the year 2020. This will increase the e prescription rapidly in the future. Major advantage of e prescription is that, one can easily upload his e prescription on the ePharmacy website and order medicine online without any hurdle. There are ePharmacy websites that does not sell drugs or medications without prescriptions. It is quite tough for the patients to upload the handwritten paper online. Therefore, due to the increasing implementation of e prescriptions, uploading the prescription online has become easy and less time consuming. This in turn is contributing for the growth of ePharmacy market in the forecast period. 

             The ePharmacy market in China and India have a vast potential for growth. Changing regulations in the regions and increase in demand for consumer healthcare products owing to change in lifestyle is driving the market growth of these economies. Growing interest of various national & international players in these markets with high potential and rapid penetration of internet and web-based technology is also amongst the key driving factors. 

             According to the ASOP Global Foundation (Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies), at any given time, 35,000 online pharmacy websites are active among which 96% are not legally following the laws and pharmacy standards. The counterfeit medication provided by illegal online pharmacies is manufactured under the unsafe conditions. In the year 2018, one of the Canadian online pharmacy was importing counterfeit cancer drugs and other drugs that were not approved by the regulatory body. For this, the pharmacy was fined around USD 34 million. Such instances are increasing day by day and that is the biggest factor contributing to the hindrance of the ePharmacy market. 

            However, Organizations like ASOP Global Foundation are continuously giving attention towards such illegal online pharmacies and working towards the eradication of such pharmacies and let people buy safer online drugs. As per the American Pharmacist Association (APhA), around 36 million people from America buy prescription medicines online without the proper prescription. These circumstances are coming into picture because of the rising online pharmacies that allows people to buy drugs without prescription. Due to the availability of such illegal online pharmacies, people are getting access to the drugs that are banned to buy without prescription such as narcotics and opioids.  

            Rising number of illegal pharmacies is having a great negative impact on ePharmacy market. However, the involvement of government and other associations in the eradication of illegal sell of online drugs is helping to reduce the number of unlawful or fake online pharmacies.

Mohammad Shahbaz Alam