South African Medicine Price Registry (MPR)

Theme: People Date Added: 2018-12-18

What is it?

The Medicine Price Registry (MPR) website publishes the latest single exit price (SEP) schedules as approved by the Pharmaceutical Economic Evaluation Unit of the Department of Health (DOH).

Key Points

  • SEP is the regulated price for medicine purchased privately
  • Database of medicine prices updated every month
  • Medicine and supplier names, price, originator or generic status
  • Over 15,000 records

Why is it Important?

The DOH regulates the price at which medicine can be sold for private (or medical aid) purchases from pharmacies or health practitioners. All medicine suppliers must submit their proposed pricing to the DOH, which then reviews and approves (or declines) the price based on benchmarking with other countries and suppliers. The pricing data is made public, which enables transparency and encourages competition in the industry. It also allows consumers to find pricing information, and cheaper alternatives.


How can it be accessed and used?

There are two main information categories on the MPR website which can be accessed via the home page:

Database of Medicine Prices is published as a large XLSX spreadsheet which can be downloaded directly. Medicine providers also submit annual adjustments which can be viewed here.

Guidelines, templates and approvals are documents published in various other parts of the website. These documents explain how medicine providers should submit information and changes to regulations.

OpenUp has developed an API interface and website to view this data in a more interactive way. For example, practitioners and patients can now easily search for generic alternatives to medicines they have been prescribed.

Database of Medicine Prices 05 May 2018

Location: South Africa
Format: CSV
Year: 2018Last Checked:None
Online: Access URL
Column/
File Names:
  • Applicant Name: Name of the medicine provider
  • Active Ingredients: The ingredient(s) in the medicine that has most impact on your health
  • SEP: Single Exit Price is the base price for the medicine. The pharmacy can add a regulated dispensing fee.
  • finance
  • spending
  • licensing
  • health

Resource contact name:Directorate: Pharmaceutical Economic Evaluations (PEE)

Creation or start date:2018-12-18

Resource contact updated at:2018-12-19

Spatial coverage  South Africa http://www.geonames.org/953987/south-africa.html

Where else has the resource been used?

Year Project Name::
2018 An evaluation of warfarin use at an urban district-level hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa
2017 A global comparison of the cost of patented cancer drugs in relation to global differences in wealth