With regard to generic prescribing, dispensing and awareness, the findings of this study revealed that a high majority of generic manufacturers were dissatisfied with generic prescribing, generic public awareness and generic education and information to healthcare professionals in Malaysia, while slight majority were satisfied with generic dispensing. These results reflect the findings in earlier studies in Malaysia that reported lack of confidence in generic prescribing, generic dispensing and low level of generic awareness in Malaysia.18, 19, 22, 23, 24 and 25 In addition,
the positive and significant relationship between perceived level of satisfaction with generic prescribing and generic public awareness suggests that from the perspective of the Malaysian generic manufacturers, generics public awareness is positively
click here linked with generic prescribing, and vice-versa. This finding is found consistent with the literature which indicated that generic prescribing is influenced by consumers’ knowledge and awareness about CHIR-99021 price generic medicines, and generic prescribing and communication with consumers contribute to increased awareness and use of generic medicines by consumers.1, 18 and 26 Accordingly, it has been noted that “physician and consumers perceptions are interlinked”.4 Therefore, the findings of this present study show that the low level of generic prescribing in Malaysia could be increased by intensifying generic knowledge, education and public awareness. This could be achieved by ongoing mass education and campaign and education of healthcare professionals about generic medicines. One limitation of this study was the inability to obtain response from all the study’s potential respondents despite repeated mailings very and telephone calls. Although the response wave analysis revealed no significant difference between early and late responders on all the study variables of interest, because late non-responders are only
“proxy” non-responders, their being similar to responders does not conclusively indicate an absence of non-response bias. Overall, Malaysian generic industry perceived the level of generic dispensing to be satisfactory but the level of generic prescribing, generic education and information to healthcare professional and generic public awareness were unsatisfactory. The generic drug industry in Malaysia expressed an ambiguous perception on the effectiveness of government regulations and policies in promoting generic medicines in Malaysia. Therefore, in order to benefit fully from the cost-lowering advantages of generic medicines, it is necessary to bridge the gap between generic policy intent and implementation in Malaysia. Additionally, there is a need to enhance the levels of generic prescribing, education and public awareness on generic medicines in Malaysia, in order to create a right market environment for generic medicines production and market availability.
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