The golden rule of Canadian Pharmacy Family is to approach choosing our suppliers responsibly. At the base of all this processes there are solid and important values: the sense of responsibility of the people who work with, the drive towards innovation. The way we operate has no secrets, it is all mapped in our system. Read this article to learn about the principles according to which we choose the manufacturers supplying the drugs that we offer for your attention on our pages.
Why buy generic drugs at Canadian Family Pharmacy?Many people wonder what the difference is between a generic or equivalent drug and an original drug and if generic drugs are less effective than branded ones. In the pharmacy an equivalent is often recommended when the patient requests a specific drug, and this is because these products have the same efficacy and safety as the more well-known ones. Let’s explain it better.
The drugs are composed of active ingredients and excipients. Active principles are substances capable of having a pharmacological effect on the organism. Excipients are inert substances that have no therapeutic capacity and that are mainly used to give medicine the right form to be taken.
Knowing which active ingredients and excipients is important above all to evaluate the safety profile of the drug according to your needs or the diseases you are suffering from. For example, a diabetic person should cautiously take a drug that contains among the excipients of sucrose, as well as lactose intolerant people should not take a medicine that contains lactose. However, what really matters from the therapeutic point of view is the active ingredient of the medicine.
What are the differences between a generic drug and an equivalent? The generic drug is nothing but a copy of the most famous brand.
The labeled drug has been on the market for many years and the patent for this medicine has duration of 10 years. After this deadline, the same product can be copied by other pharmaceutical companies using the same active ingredient and placed on the market with the name of the active ingredient itself.
By making a comparison, we find out that this is the composition of the two drugs:
✚ Tachipirine:
✚ Paracetamol Sella:
As you can see, the active principle is the same and is present in the same quantity in both products, that is, that is the list of excipients that have no therapeutic value. The equivalent drug is generally 20-30% cheaper than the brand name.
Why? For several reasons: the brand-name drug has been patented with all the research costs that this entailed, it has a ‘brand’ that is immediately recognizable thanks to the advertising and promotion that has been made to it by law.
Often the idea that the generic drug is less effective than the branded one, or even dangerous. Of course it is not true. As said the active substance is the same and the equivalent drug is, according to the law, ‘a medicine that has the same qualitative and quantitative composition of active substances and the same pharmaceutical form of the reference medicine as well as a bioequivalence with the proven reference medicine appropriate bioavailability studies’.
Bioequivalence is dictated by the fact that, for the same dose, the concentration profiles in the blood of the active ingredient with respect to time are so similar that it is unlikely that there will be significant differences in safety and efficacy.
It is important to underline that in order to be authorized to place all drugs, labeled or equivalent, on the market, they must meet precise legal requirements aimed at guaranteeing product safety and quality.
Summarizing the above, for a drug to be defined as equivalent, it must meet specific requirements:
At CFP, generics cost up to 90% less while having all of the above features of a quality generic medicine. This is why it is always economically beneficial and safe for your health to invest in bioequivalent therapy. Learn how we make sure that our assortment remains of the best quality on the market.
What are generic or equivalent drugs?What are generic or equivalent drugs? Anyone of us who has ever gone to the pharmacy has certainly been faced with these types of medicines.
Generic or equivalent drugs are regulated since 1995, but despite the more than twenty years of life is still so much the aura of distrust that surrounds them. This is due both to the lack of information about it and to a substantial basic skepticism in the face of these medicines.
Every pharmacist is required by law to inform us, when we are at the counter and request a medicine, of the existence of generic or equivalent medicine. Not only that, we must also provide all the information on price differences and reassure about the therapeutic efficacy.
Despite this, many are still ignorant of what generic or equivalent drugs are, why they cost less and what are the therapeutic capabilities. All questions to which we will answer, also showing how high the savings are actually using these medicines.
Although the health sector is inevitably of great importance, there are many doubts about it. We often ask ourselves how to book a clinical examination, how to find a general practitioner for non-residents and also what is a generic drug.
Generic or equivalent drugs are medicines that, after appropriate clinical studies, prove to be bioequivalent compared to other drugs. In other words, they have the same active ingredient and the same pharmacological efficacy of branded drugs.
In terms of the law, to be defined bioequivalent must have the same active ingredient present in the same dose, the same pharmaceutical form, the same route of administration and the same therapeutic indications. Twenty years after the registration of a new patent-protected drug, the exclusivity of marketing is usually dropped, with the possibility therefore also for other companies to produce generic or equivalent drugs to the original one. This explains why they cost an average of 20% to 50% less than the original ones. On the other hand, generic or equivalent drugs have absolutely the same pharmacological efficacy and allow, in addition, also to save a lot of money.
The standards of drug manufacture held by CFPStrengthened by our commercial and logistic experience, we have a complete and integrated control of our supply chain, from the supply of ingredients to delivery to our customers, both for pharmaceutical products and medical devices.
Production is a delicate moment and this is why it requires validated mannufacturing processes and rigorous and detailed procedures, aimed at ensuring that the drug produced always corresponds to the authorized quality standards.
Also in the field of the production of drugs ‘prevention is better than cure’: in fact there is a function, the Quality Assurance, which has the function of establishing rules, applying which ensures that the quality of the manufactured drug will correspond to the specifics of quality authorized by the competent health authorities.
Among the many tasks of Quality Assurance, there are the following:
The quality in the production of a drug starts with the raw materials: our suppliers, before being usable, are carefully selected and qualified: for this purpose several samples of the raw material are subjected to strict quality controls, and in case of positive outcome test, a team of Quality Assurance experts perform an inspection at the raw material production plant to verify compliance with international quality standards. Only after the establishment has been inspected and approved by Quality Assurance can the material of the new supplier be used.
But, in addition to the quality of raw materials, to ensure the quality of a drug, they are necessary
The control activityAlthough the prevention activity is impressive, to further protect patients, the Quality Control laboratories carry out all necessary checks on the raw materials and packaging materials used to assess their suitability for use.
Once approved, these materials are used to manufacture the drug, on which further tests are performed to verify compliance with the authorized quality specifications. Before the drug can be sold, a further verification of the production and control documentation is carried out, to make sure once again that all the operations have been carried out correctly, that all the analytical tests performed have given a result in conformity with the intended one.
Quality makes the difference. We at CFP believe that a quality drug must be:
Only thanks to a constant work of all the functions involved in the production and control processes, it is possible to guarantee that the manufacturers of generic drugs that CFP picks will meet all the expected requirements.
Generic or equivalent drugs, how much can they save a year?The use of generic or equivalent drugs, whenever we need them, can lead to substantial savings even at the end of the year. Let’s see some examples.
For an unmarried man, who lives alone and is afflicted by hypothesis of gastric ulcer, only for this item the saving will be about $100 a year. For a woman who is not married and lives alone, affected by hypotheses of migraines and insomnia, the annual savings will be around $250.
A typical family formed by a father, mother and two children, where there are hypotheses of allergy, anxiety, asthma and herpes, the use of generic or equivalent drugs can lead to an annual saving of about $USD.
Finally, in an elderly couple, where hypotheses are problems of prostatic hypertrophy, insomnia and acute pains, the annual savings can be estimated in the order of $200.
In a period economically speaking not exciting, being aware that you can save good figures by taking care of equally effectively, certainly is something to know.