This was presented at mySociety's TICTeC Show & Tell event, which was held virtually on 23rd March 2021. More details on the event can be found here: https://tictec.mysociety.org/showandtells/2021

1. Medical Pharmacy
Fighting the sale of counterfeit
medicines through civic tech
and digitisation

2. The Problem
Illegal pharmacies are a big problem in Pakistan:
● In the KP province there are only 50 drug inspectors who are required to check more than 12,000
registered chemist shops
● In 66,879 inspections carried out from 2014-2018, 1,471 drugs were declared substandard and 146
spurious, 2,322 pharmacies were sealed, 72 FIRs were registered and 544 cases were decided by
courts with the convicts being awarded fines and jail sentences (source: Dawn News)
● More than 600 drug licences issued in Peshawar were found to be fake on verification (source: Dawn
News)

3. Issues and Challenges
There were numerous issues and challenges in the pharmaceutical sector of the KP province. On one hand the health
department faced issues in tracking duplicate and fake licenses and on the other hand there were no centralized online
systems where drug store owners could apply for licenses online.
There was a need for an online platform where:
Users could easily
apply for licenses
Department could
check duplicate and fake licenses
Tracking the progress of
each license would be easy

4. KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA
GOVERNMENT INNOVATION
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Selecting the Problem Statement
The Fellowship team received a request from the Department of
Health KP to digitise and automate the pharmaceutical license
registration, renewal and verification process.
The Fellowship team selected the problem statement under the 6th
cycle of the Fellowship program which was executed from
June-November of 2020.
A team of three Fellows were assigned to the department to
develop a digital system for pharmaceutical license registration and
make the entire process digital.

5. The KP Government Innovation Fellowship Program is a 6-month program supported by Code
for Pakistan, the KP IT Board, and The World Bank
Empowering
Government
Increasing Citizen
Reach
Creating Efficiency in
Govt. Processes
Increasing Govt.
Transparency
The Fellowship Program - Key Focus Areas

6. The Fellows
Muhammad Awais Khan
(Full Stack Developer)
Asfandiyar
(Full Stack Developer)
Abbas Khan
(UX/UI Designer)

7. Conducting User Research
The Fellows conducted a user-research survey from a sample size of 50 respondents
(pharmacy-owners). The figures illustrate the key findings of the user research survey
Average time taken for license issuance Perception of manual processing

8. Developing a Solution
The Fellows developed a fully centralized online platform that can digitise the entire process for license
application, renewal and verification for pharmacies across the KP province. The online system has four main
modules:
Pharmacy Council
Module
1
Applicant
Module
2
DG Drugs
Module
3
Inspector
Module
4
Administrator Module

9. Applicant/Proprietor applying for
pharmacy license
AFTER SCRUTINY THE PHARMACY
LICENSE IS AWARDED
USER APPLIES FOR LICENSE ONLINE
APPLICATION IS RECEIVED BY DG
DRUGS DEPARTMENT
APPLICATION IS ASSIGNED TO DRUG
INSPECTOR
● DG Drugs
Department receives
the application
● The submitted
documentation is
checked against
pharmacy council
records
● If documents are valid
the application is
forwarded to Drug
Inspector
● User creates
account on the
online portal
● User submits
documents and
selects license
category
● User submits
application
● Drug Inspector
receives the
application
● Drug Inspector is
required to make a
field visit to check the
drug store location
and its condition
● Drug Inspector can
reject application if
the pharmacy is
substandard
Applicant is awarded
pharmacy license if the
application fulfills the
acceptance criteria
User Journey Map
users can track application status

10. System’s Security Features
Unique Tracking IDs Numeric Captcha
Codes
Data Encryption Using QR Codes
Online System’s Security Features:
These security features ensure that the data remains safe and only valid licenses
are issued

11. Pharmacy Inspection App
Drug Inspectors conduct field visits to the pharmacy for
checking documents, pharmacy location and facilities. These
checks are made through the field inspection mobile app
Verifying documents Checking medicines
and facilities
Taking geo-coordinates
of pharmacy location

12. Generating Tamper-Proof Pharmacy License
Digitally generated QR code
Allotted license number
generated through Unique ID
and Random Number
Digital signature
Qualified person digital photo
System generated validity date

13. Open Source Solution
View project on GitHub
The online system is accessible on an internet connected laptop, tablet and mobile phone. Moreover the online system
has been developed using open source libraries and tools and the project has been licensed under the MIT License (MIT).

14. Impact so Far
Over 15,000 manual records
of qualified persons digitized
Consumers can check
authenticity of licenses by
scanning QR-codes
20 Govt. officials trained
Time reduced to acquire a
license from 1 month to 10
days
Department received a low
cost sustainable solution

15. KP Government Innovation Fellowship Program
codeforpakistan.org/programs/fellowship/
/codeforpakistan
/codeforpk