KUALA LUMPUR, August 20 — The Ministry of Health (MOH) is working on a new application to enable consumers to compare retail medicine prices between private clinics and hospitals, and community pharmacies.
The app will be named MyPriMeCatcher. This name appears to be a combination of the Malaysia Medicines Price Guide (MyPriMe) that is currently hosted on a webpage by the MOH’s Pharmaceutical Services Programme (PSP), last updated August 29, 2024, and the name of the Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry’s (KPDN) existing mobile PriceCatcher app.
In a letter dated August 12, Health deputy director-general (pharmaceutical services) Azuana Ramli said the MyPriMeCatcher app initiative was kickstarted following implementation of the drug price display mandate under the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011 (Act 723) on May 1.
She described the new app, which is currently under development, as a database of medicine prices that can be “easily accessed by the general public.”
“This app is developed to increase the transparency of medicine prices and enable price comparisons, in line with the drug price display initiative,” said Azuana in her letter addressed to chief executive officers, medical practitioners, and pharmacists, as sighted by CodeBlue.
“This MyPriMeCatcher application provides a digital platform for all private health care facilities and community pharmacies to share a centralised database of displayed retail medicine prices with consumers.”
Azuana’s letter was an invitation to individual medical doctors or pharmacists – based on the designations in her address – to participate in a pilot project for the app that she described as a “price catcher for medicines.”
The pilot project by MOH’s PSP aims to test the functionality, usability, and effectiveness of the MyPriMeCatcher app before full implementation nationwide.
Doctors and pharmacists were “invited” to participate in the pilot project by submitting data on medicine prices and information on their facilities. A form, appended to Azuana’s letter, stated the participant’s agreement to “cooperate throughout the process of data collection on medicine prices for at least one year from the start date of data collection.”
Azuana also wrote in her letter that the MyPriMeCatcher app is expected to “enable facilities to self-update price lists quickly, without additional costs.”
“This ensures that consumers can access the latest information on prices, thus improving consumer confidence towards business operations in the respective health facilities.”
The Price Control and Anti-Profiteering (Price Marking for Drug) Order 2025 under Act 723 explicitly states that the list of selling prices of the drugs displayed in private health care facilities and community pharmacies must be able to be “accessed and seen by the consumers.”
These lists must be either in “physical form, electronic media, electronic screen or any tool or device which is suitable to the needs and condition of the private health care facility and community pharmacy.” Nowhere does the Order state that drug prices can be displayed in an external mobile application or website, without either print or electronic display in the facility premises.
“Pharmacists and medical practitioners participating in this pilot project are eligible to get CPD (continuing professional development) points and a participation certificate,” said Azuana.
The Health deputy DG’s letter did not state that participation in the pilot project was mandatory for doctors or pharmacists.
The drug price display mandate is exclusively within KPDN’s jurisdiction, since the price marking order was legally gazetted and enforced under Act 723. Any pharmacy enforcement officers from MOH who join KPDN’s price display operations will be officially conducting enforcement as deputised KPDN assistant price controllers, not MOH officers.
Unlike MOH that appears to rely on voluntary participation from doctors and pharmacists to submit data on their retail medicine prices, KPDN’s PriceCatcher app uses information physically collected from KPDN price monitoring officers.
“KPDN is not responsible if there are discrepancies in prices,” states a disclaimer on the app.
KPDN’s PriceCatcher app monitors the retail prices of 480 selected goods in wet markets, hypermarkets, supermarkets, mini markets, and retail stores across six categories of products: fresh goods, dry goods, packaged goods, milk and baby products, hygiene products, and beverages. Prices are updated daily.
Doctors’ associations have been furious over what they perceive as interference into the medical profession by a ministry outside MOH. The medical fraternity’s anger deepened after Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Deputy Minister Fuziah Salleh told Parliament recently that the National Action Council on Cost of Living (Naccol) has mandated prescriptions and itemised billing in private medical clinics, in addition to price display.
MOH now appears to have adopted KPDN’s language, with Azuana’s letter using the term “consumers” instead of “patients”. MOH’s planned MyPriMeCatcher app was also obviously inspired by KPDN’s PriceCatcher; what’s less clear is who MOH wants to “catch” for so-called profiteering in private health care.
Cabinet recently refused to raise private general practitioners’ (GP) consultation fees that have stagnated at RM10 to RM35 for more than three decades, marking another broken promise by Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad to increase GP fees before the price display mandate came into force.
Should MOH fail to get sufficient voluntary participation from GPs in particular for its MyPriMeCatcher pilot project, it is unclear if the ministry can legally compel them to submit data on drug prices.
Like how KPDN operates its PriceCatcher app, KPDN can manually collect drug price data from whichever private health care facility or community pharmacy and submit it to MOH for MOH’s MyPriMeCatcher app.
Alternatively, pharmacy enforcement officers or any staff from MOH can go down to the ground unofficially as members of the general public (since MOH does not have legal authority to enforce the drug price display order under Act 723) and collect the data from the medicine price lists in respective facilities themselves, since this is public information.
However, GP clinics may be well within their rights to deny entry to unauthorised MOH staff collecting drug price information if they are not visiting the facility as patients to seek treatment.
