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The European e-pharmacy market could not be more different. While comprehensive digital processes have long been commonplace in the medical sector in countries like Estonia and Sweden, the introduction and implementation of such in other countries is still failing mightily. Estonia, in particular, is the biggest pioneer of digitalization. It has integrated digital health services such as the e-prescription, digital patient records and a national health portal into everyday life. However, attempts to apply this system in other EU countries, such as Germany, have failed for the most part so far. Nevertheless, much has happened in terms of digitization, especially since the pandemic has started. Online retailers in all sectors have experienced an upswing. e-pharmacies have also been able to significantly increase their popularity. In Germany, the e-prescription is going to be introduced nationwide, too. However, anumber of problems are still making a complete rollout much more difficult.
We took a closer look at the situations in different countries. They still have incomplete digitization in the healthcare sector. We were able to find strong differences. The EU5 countries Germany, UK, Italy, France and Spain have a large share of the European pharmaceutical market. Additionally, there is a significant growth potential in their markets. The growth is mainly driven by e-pharmacies. Nevertheless, the differences regarding the siutations are significant. This can be seen especially in terms of sales volume, user traffic and regulations for ecommerce. We examined these differences in more detail in our European E-Pharmacy Study 22 and now present some key insights from it here.
