Online pharmacies are rapidly reshaping how Kenyans access medicines and healthcare services. While the shift toward digital pharmacy services was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has continued to grow alongside wider consumer adoption of online platforms across many sectors. Today, patients can order medicines from their phones, receive chronic care refills from home and access medications that may not be available in their local pharmacies.
This convenience has created new opportunities for healthcare delivery, especially for patients managing long-term conditions and underserved populations with limited physical access to pharmacies. However, the rapid growth of e-pharmacy services has also exposed major gaps in regulation and patient protection.
Weak prescription verification systems, fake or reused prescriptions, substandard medicines, poor medicine handling during delivery and gaps in data privacy protections all present serious risks to patients. The same digital systems that make medicines easier to access can also make misuse and fraud easier to scale if safeguards are weak.
It was with this in mind that the PRISM team convened a three-day consensus-building workshop that brought together regulators, healthcare providers, online pharmacy operators, professional associations, academia and patient groups to discuss the future of e-pharmacy governance in Kenya.
A Landmark Multi-Stakeholder Conversation
The workshop brought together more than 50 participants across the three days, making it one of the most comprehensive multi-stakeholder discussions on e-pharmacy governance held in Kenya to date.
At the centre of the discussions was one key question: how can Kenya support the convenience and efficiency offered by online pharmacies while still protecting patients from fraud, unsafe medicines and weak oversight?
To answer this, stakeholders reviewed existing regulations, identified operational and regulatory gaps and worked together to develop practical reforms that respond to both patient safety concerns and the realities of running digital pharmacy services.
Participants broadly agreed that digital innovation in healthcare cannot succeed without strong systems for accountability, prescription integrity, medicine traceability and patient data protection.
Three Days of Dialogue, Reflection, and Consensus
The workshop discussions were guided by a 10-step e-pharmacy process map covering the full patient journey, from registration and prescription validation to medicine delivery, refunds, reporting and advertising.
Understanding the Regulatory Landscape
Day One focused on understanding the regulatory landscape. Public sector institutions including the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB), Ministry of Health and Digital Health Agency examined gaps within the current e-pharmacy guidelines, particularly around enforcement, interoperability and oversight of emerging digital health services.
Operational Realities from the Frontlines
On Day Two, private-sector providers, professional associations and patient groups shared operational realities from the frontlines of e-pharmacy practice. Discussions highlighted tensions between regulatory expectations and what is practically achievable in areas such as prescription handling, delivery logistics and patient verification.
Co-Creating Solutions across Sectors
By Day Three, stakeholders from both groups came together to negotiate areas of agreement and co-create practical solutions. Rather than discussing digital health in broad terms, participants focused on specific operational processes such as prescription validation, last-mile delivery standards, pharmacovigilance systems and patient confidentiality safeguards.
Understanding the Risks in Digital Pharmacy Care
Several major concerns emerged during the workshop discussions.
Prescription Misuse and Abuse
One of the biggest challenges was prescription fraud and misuse. Participants noted that electronic prescriptions can easily be reused across multiple platforms, shared between patients or falsified altogether in the absence of unified verification systems. The lack of a centralized electronic prescription repository also makes it difficult for pharmacies to track whether prescriptions have already been dispensed elsewhere.
Data Privacy and Confidentiality
Data privacy and confidentiality also emerged as major concerns. Online pharmacies routinely handle sensitive patient information, including medical history, contact details, payment information and delivery addresses. Participants stressed that without strong safeguards, data breaches could seriously undermine public trust in digital healthcare systems.
Safe and Accountable Product Delivery
Stakeholders also raised concerns around delivery and logistics. Medicines, especially temperature-sensitive products and controlled substances, require careful handling throughout the delivery chain. Participants discussed risks associated with tampered packages, weak cold-chain monitoring and unclear accountability when third-party riders are involved in medicine delivery.
Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities
Finally, participants highlighted regulatory grey areas between e-pharmacy services and telemedicine. Questions remain around who is authorized to prescribe medicines remotely, which institutions oversee tele-prescribing and how online pharmacies should integrate with broader digital health systems.
Consensus Priorities for E-Pharmacy Governance
Despite differing perspectives, stakeholders reached broad agreement on several reforms aimed at strengthening accountability and patient protection within the e-pharmacy sector.
Licensing and Oversight
Participants proposed that online pharmacies should be linked to licensed brick-and-mortar pharmacies to improve traceability and regulatory oversight. They also recommended separate licensing for e-pharmacy operations, with publicly verifiable registration systems to help patients distinguish legitimate providers from rogue operators.
Bolstering Digital Systems
There was also strong support for safer digital systems. Participants recommended minimum standards for electronic prescriptions, centralized prescription repositories and stronger interoperability between digital healthcare platforms to reduce prescription fraud and duplicate dispensing.
Some stakeholders further proposed unique domain identifiers such as “.pharmacy.ke” to strengthen public trust online. Discussions also explored the future possibility of AI-supported prescription validation systems.
Patient Safety and Confidentiality Reforms
Patient safety remained central throughout the workshop. Stakeholders emphasized the need for tamper-proof packaging, better standards for pharmaceutical delivery services and mandatory training for all personnel handling medicines and patient information. Participants also agreed that online pharmacies should provide clearer patient counselling and guidance, even when medicines are delivered remotely.
Pharmacovigilance
The workshop further highlighted the importance of stronger pharmacovigilance systems. Proposed reforms included integrated side-effect reporting tools, QR-code reporting systems and better digital recordkeeping to improve monitoring of medicine safety and adverse drug reactions.
Continuing Debates in E-Pharmacy Regulation
While the workshop produced broad consensus in many areas, discussions around advertising and promotions remained unresolved. Participants noted that Kenya first needs clearer pharmaceutical advertising guidelines before developing rules specifically for e-pharmacy platforms.
Stakeholders also emphasized the need to distinguish between advertising medicines and advertising online pharmacy services themselves. The discussions reflected the broader challenge of regulating rapidly evolving digital healthcare systems without slowing innovation.
The Engage to Action Model: PRISM’s Consensus Building Approach
A distinguishing feature of this workshop is that it was informed by the Open PHENCES Engage to Action model. Engage to Action is an ecosystem-based approach to dialogue in Public-Private partnerships (PPP), designed to strengthen public sector scaling of health innovations through collaboration, co-creation, and shared priority setting.
Moving away from conventional “push” approaches – an innovator independently markets solutions to government systems, this model promotes a “pull” approach, where government, community, and private sector actors come together with innovators to define health system challenges from each stakeholder’s perspective and operational realities as well as the innovations that can address them.
Engage to Action features structured engagement, where each stakeholder group (for example, government/state actors) first delineates their challenges and describes their priorities. Afterwards, they come together to understand each other’s challenges, perspectives, and operational realities, and together they co-create solutions, including innovations that account for stakeholders’ realities. In so doing, the model promotes transparency, creates trust, and ensures collective ownership of solutions and innovations resulting from such engagements.
The Engage to Action model also emphasizes the embedding of innovations within government/county budgets and planning processes to improve innovation uptake and sustainability. This workshop served as a practical application of this innovative PPP approach – we brough together diverse stakeholders to identify governance priorities, build consensus, and develop actionable pathways to strengthen digital health systems.
Looking Ahead: Advancing Patient-Centered Digital Health Governance
The consensus-building workshop marked an important step toward strengthening digital health governance in Kenya. By bringing together regulators, providers, patient groups and industry actors, the discussions created a shared understanding of both the opportunities and risks shaping the future of online pharmacy services.
The recommendations emerging from the workshop now provide a strong foundation for revising Kenya’s e-pharmacy guidelines in ways that improve accountability, patient safety and access to care. As digital healthcare continues to expand, Kenya has an opportunity to become a regional leader in responsible e-pharmacy regulation by ensuring innovation evolves alongside trust, oversight and patient protection.
