Abstract
Objective: The thought of providing the best quality of medicines at cheaper costs made the governments to think of generic drug substitutions in order to minimize the economic burden. This study was designed to investigate the attitude of physicians and pharmacists towards generic medicines and thus to reduce the gap between them.Methods: This is a simple, prospective, cross-sectional, comparative study conducted for a period of 3 mo. 100 Subjects (50 pharmacists and 50 physicians) were included in this study. Subjects who ever graduated with the pharmacy degree and working as pharmacists, as well as clinical practitioners, were included in this study. Data collected using a validated questionnaire.Results: 60% of physicians and 80% of pharmacists were confident enough in dispensing generic products. 56% of physicians agree that pharmacists play a vital role in providing assistance on the use of generic medicines. 70% of physicians and 90% of pharmacists agreed that the generic medicines are of less expensive.Conclusion: Our Study concludes that pharmacist’s shows a higher positive response towards the usage of generic products than physicians. Generic drugs typically cost 30% to 60% less than their brand products. In addition, patients taking generic drugs seem to be more willing to continue therapy.
Highlights
The high cost of medicines in India has made the treatment of many diseases unaffordable to the poor and even has become a strain on the budgets of middle-class citizens
Generic drugs are less expensive comparable, rescue costs on medicines [4]. This lesser cost are the reason for that innovator product cannot be protected by patents for longer periods, and after the expiry of these patents, the generic drug manufacturers can formulate the product by ignoring the steps such as drug discovery, preclinical and clinical trials for which lots of money should be afforded [5]
Department wise data distribution among physicians and pharmacists are shown in fig. 2 and 3
Summary
The high cost of medicines in India has made the treatment of many diseases unaffordable to the poor and even has become a strain on the budgets of middle-class citizens. Pharmacist role includes the selection of generic substitute that is bioequivalent to the innovator product, educating both patients and health care professionals about their quality as well as safety and promoting the compliance with therapy among patients [11]. Many factors such as lack of knowledge and insufficient awareness regarding efficacies and safeties among practitioners and pharmacists may influence selecting, prescribing and dispensing of generic medicines [12]. This study was designed to investigate the attitude of physicians and pharmacists towards generic medicines and to reduce the gap between them
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