Patients using telemedicine platforms in Korea will soon be able to immediately check which nearby pharmacies can fill their prescriptions.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service said Sunday that starting Monday, they will provide telemedicine platform operators with information on whether individual pharmacies purchase or dispense specific prescription drugs from telemedicine consultations.
Until now, patients who received telemedicine consultations had no way of knowing which nearby pharmacies stocked their prescribed medications, even after receiving a prescription from a doctor. The inconvenience was particularly acute when patients had to call multiple pharmacies or physically visit several locations in so-called "pharmacy hopping" after receiving telemedicine consultations on public holidays or late at night. Controversy also erupted when several telemedicine platforms, including Doctor Now, entered the pharmacy wholesale business on the grounds of tracking pharmacy-specific drug inventories. The latest measure was designed to resolve such public inconveniences and seamlessly connect the process from telemedicine consultation to dispensing.
The data being opened covers medications that have been prescribed through telemedicine over the past year. The key feature is providing telemedicine platforms with information on whether each pharmacy has purchased or dispensed the relevant drug through an open application programming interface (API). The approach is based on the premise that pharmacies with a history of purchasing or dispensing a specific drug are more likely to have it in stock than those without such a record.
The data will be provided from Monday. Each telemedicine platform plans to use the information to develop user-tailored services such as "nearby pharmacies available for dispensing."
After completing a telemedicine consultation, patients will be able to immediately check "nearby pharmacies available for dispensing" through the platform and visit the closest one to receive and take their medication right away. The MOHW expects the measure to significantly reduce treatment gaps caused by dispensing delays or abandonment.
"By opening the data, we will be able to significantly reduce public inconvenience during the telemedicine process," said Kwak Soon-heon, director-general for health policy at the MOHW. "We will spare no policy support to help telemedicine take root and improve patients' access to medical services."
