Starting tomorrow, Wednesday March 1, pharmacies will no longer accept recipes medical that they be sent by WhatsApp, since the Government has already regulated the electronic prescription law.
Said law establishes that, from now on, medicines can only be sold or supplied with the order on paper or with prescription electronic, which is carried out by the treating physician through a digital platform, with a certified electronic signature and a unique identification by barcode or QR code.
This way, will no longer be accepted in any pharmacy nationwide prescriptions handwritten documents sent as a photo by electronic channels such as WhatsApp or email.
The measure was regulated through decree 98/2023, published today in the Official Gazette. The document also defines the minimum requirements that the order must contain in order for it to be valid, which, in essence, unlike the formulas sent by mail or WhatsApp, are not a photo. These will have the physician’s registered signature and a barcode.
In this way, the Government established that “the recipes Electronic or digital must be unique (have a unique identifier that links the professional, medication and patient), unalterable and secure. The data must be confidential and the systems progressively interoperable (in order to be able to exchange information for health purposes)”.
Likewise, “its content must be in accordance with what is determined by the laws of professional practice and the prescription by generic name for medicines.”
Each order will have a validity period of no more than 30 days, in the case of medications, and 60 days for other prescriptions, such as analyzes and studies. In addition, for treatment of chronic patients The formulas may be extended up to 90 days.
The process will be done gradually.
From the Health portfolio, Minister Carla Vizzotti explained: “Although it is a complete regulation, it is not that everything will change the next day, but rather that we begin to follow a path of adaptation of many strategies that are already in operation, but that have to start meeting some minimum standards”.
This means that the change will be implemented progressively and that digital orders must comply with the provisions of the law to be valid. In this sense, they stressed that, starting tomorrow, photo prescriptions sent by mail or WhatsApp will not be accepted.
