AliHealth to Launch New Third-party Drug Tracking Platform
Sina Tech, 5/10/16
Alibaba Health Information Technology (AliHealth) (0241.HK), the health services subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), plans to rebuild its third-party drug tracking platform, which was originally intended to mitigate the problem of counterfeit medications, announced AliHealth VP Wang Peiyu. The platform is currently under development, but should be officially launched within a month.
The company's original product identification, authentication and tracking system (PIATS) ran into problems after pharmaceutical companies sued the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) for forcing them to participate in the system. The CFDA announced in February that participation in the PIATS would be voluntary.
In order to lower the entry barriers for companies to participate, the new platform will use the same technical standards as specified by CFDA for electronic monitoring codes, said Wang. Furthermore, AliHealth will provide free services to help pharmaceutical companies or health organizations that had joined its previous platform to transition to the new platform. Companies will be exempt from fees for basic drug tracking services for the first three years. AliHealth will only collect fees for technical support concerning data storage or interface interchanges. AliHealth will increase investment to upgrade the technology for standardizing codes and ensuring platform security.
Basic medicine tracking services will always be free for the public, and AliHealth will provide an API for mobile apps such as Alibaba Group's C2C e-commerce site Taobao and Tencent's (0700.HK) WeChat mobile messaging app, said Wang. To ensure food safety, the tracking platform will also be expanded to cover food and agricultural products.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see "China Suspends Rule Requiring Drugmakers to Join AliHealth's Coding System," MD 2/21/16 and "China's FDA Sued for Allowing Alibaba to Operate National Pharma Monitoring System," MD 1/27/16 issues.
Keywords: online healthcare Internet Alibaba Group Alibaba Health 0241.HK BABA China Food and Drug Administration regulation
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