Is buying medicines online a good or a bad idea?

My friend is developing an android app + website for ordering medicines online. He has some unique ideas for that.

This is being done already for OTC drugs. Prescription drugs pose a different problem. The seller has to verify the genuineness of the prescription as some drugs can pose hazards if wrongly taken.
I understand that Amazon may soon be selling even implantable devices online.

The last time I went to buy medicines for my granny, the pharmacist said that as per the new rules, one needs to have a prescription for certain kinds of medicines. Since my granny had lost that slip, I had to go to the doctor again and make him write the prescription again.

Now instead of that - If some company lets the user upload a photo of the prescription and if it has a medicine to be taken over 6 months (or even life long), they can deliver a fresh batch every two weeks or every month to the user's doorstep. No need to preserve old prescriptions. I think it will be a big hit if the elderly can use it without much hassle.

Even people admitted in the hospitals with not too many people to take care of them can have someone register on the site and subscribe to weekly doses or something like that.

The biggest concern is that of misuse. But doesn't every idea suffer from the problem of being used by evil elements in the society? 👀

Online websites for medicines are already there. There are specific websites for apollo pharmacy and medplus etc. I mostly saw indian websites not from other countries though.

And yeah about the context of the post, this can be misused in a big way. They should avoid selling few drugs online (even though the prescription is uploaded) that will solve few problems.

And in Hyderabad (india) I mostly see that, a doctor writes medicines which are only available in the medical shop of that hospital. And you get a different name (same composition) outside which is again a problem getting some medicines online!

Many issues involved here, and it won't be as simple as it seems. OTC drugs yes can be bought online. But for other drugs there might a problem. The role of pharmacist as a mediator stands replaced more or less by this system. Medicines are mostly sold by their brand names in the country, which are often different from their generic names (term referring to the chemical makeup of a drug rather than to the advertised brand name under which the drug is sold) so a pharmacist is needed in person most of the times to solve the discrepancies arising or for an one-on-one conversation with the consumer. Moreover the pharmacists need to be qualified to run drug stores so that they can take a call of their own in case of confusions( this might not be a norm in the country but it ought to be so) online system makes this whole process indirect and therefore unnecessarily complex. Personal interaction was what made the entire process more reliable. And since such interaction lacks with online pharmacy business, this can be long shot. The whole concept of Internet pharmacy is yet to be registered effectively in India, and even if it was to take roots it first needs to be backed up with a robust law and license framework to prevent misuse.