An episode* of Aamir Khan hosted Satyamev Jayate on the rising cost of the medicines in the Indian healthcare system and their limited access to the poor and masses led to an open discussion on the availability of generic drugs. For the uninitiated, the generic drugs are medicines which are marketed under their chemical name without advertising – which means they are as effective as their branded counterparts yet substantially cheaper in cost.
This simple idea led a Mumbai based team to create Getdavai, a drug discovery and comparison tool. Getdavai is a simple hack for people to enter the name of a branded drug and it recommends the closest possible generic drug with the same chemical composition with their prices, helping the user make the final decision. Though it goes without saying that the service is not a substitute for the expertise of a doctor, but it seems to do a pretty good job on the face of it.
India is a global hub for the manufacturing of the generic drugs and seeing the difference in the pricing of the medicines, we definitely see a use case for the service. The home page is no frills with just the option to enter the name of the drug and a scroll option to change the accuracy of the recommendations (feature suggestion: how about enabling sorting of the result?). The medicines listing provides the critical information in the form of the name of the manufacturer, composition and price.
As far as the product roadmap is concerned, the team has planned a number of interesting features which includes Drug Search Query API(private beta), comprehensive information about the drug usage, drug portfolio management for pharmaceutical companies and drug search at the local chemists.
Do give Getdavai a spin and share your comments/feedback with the team.
* : Embedded youtube version of the Satyamev Jayate episode that sparked the discussion related to generic drugs market in India.
