SAFE. SUPPLIED. ANY TIME.
FOR PATIENTS
Import medicinal products and medical devices at a lower price
Is your health your top priority? Then it's certainly important for you to rely on top quality for medicinal products and medical devices. But did you know that you can still pay attention to the price even for prescription medicines?
As a statutory health insurance patient, you pay 10% of the selling price per package for each prescription medicine, up to a maximum of €10 and at least €5.
Medicinal products and medical devices from parallel imports offer you the advantage of obtaining the original product with its original quality at a lower price. This saves you money, as an insured patient in the form of a reduced co-payment and as a private patient on your personal contribution. Through cheaper import medicinal products, the healthcare system directly saved around €264 million* in 2017. In fact, indirect savings in the billions can be achieved through price competition, which benefits the community and can help keep your health insurance contributions stable.
* Source: PROGNOS study "Financial impacts of the import of medicinal products on the healthcare system", November 2018
What exactly are medicinal products or medical devices from parallel import?
These are medicinal products or medical devices produced by an original manufacturer in another EU country. Due to different health systems and taxation, the products are often cheaper abroad than in Germany. B2B Medical therefore brings such original products from other EU countries to Germany. The goods are repackaged here so that the packaging receives the mandatory German labelling for patient safety and is placed on the market under its own pharmaceutical central number. The price advantages from this parallel import are passed on to you as a patient.
Original versus generic
Your pharmacist is legally obliged to dispense a cheaper medicine with the same active ingredient instead of the prescribed medicine. Only if the doctor prohibits substitution of the medicine by marking "Aut-Idem" on the prescription can you be sure of receiving the original. Original medicines for which patents no longer exist are therefore often replaced with "generics". These are "copycat products". A generic is a medicinal product that contains the same active ingredient as a formerly patented preparation but often different excipients. It is therefore not the original medicinal product but a similar or equivalent, usually cheaper, preparation.
Benefits for you
As a patient, parallel imports offer you significant advantages:
Better prices
Procuring the original product from other EU countries leads to price advantages, which we can pass on to you.
Relief for the community
Price competition can achieve indirect savings in the billions. You as a patient also benefit from this, e.g. by keeping your insurance contributions stable.
The quality of the original
Parallel imports from B2B Medical are 100% equivalent to the original. Guaranteed!
Complete safety
As a pharmaceutical wholesaler and manufacturer of medicinal products, we are legally controlled and meet the highest safety and quality standards according to GMP/GDP and ISO 13485.
MARKET-ORIENTED. STABLE. RELIABLE.
Safety and quality
Quality is our top priority. Our quality management system is certified according to ISO 13685 and has been officially audited and certified by authorities according to GMP and GDP standards. Naturally, this also entails the highest hygiene standards and seamless, transparent documentation of all processes.
But how safe are products from other EU countries? To avoid counterfeits, we match the serialisation number – a unique security feature of each medicinal product – with a Europe-wide central database. Only after positive verification do the products enter our manufacturing process. This means that counterfeits can be excluded from the start. And of course, we also take great care to ensure that our suppliers meet our quality and safety standards. Only suppliers who have successfully qualified are eligible to be our partners.
The same applies to our logistics partners, who must ensure temperature-controlled transport according to specific product requirements to guarantee the safety of the medicinal products during transport at all times.
Authenticity guaranteed!
To check the authenticity of medicinal products, we work with the securPharm system. Especially when medicinal products are parallel imported from abroad, the question arises of how we can guarantee authenticity.
Using a Safe-Ident device, we check all DataMatrix codes applied to prescription medicines. In accordance with the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (Directive 2011/62/EU), we match this security feature with the European Medicines Verification System (EMVS). Only after positive verification do the products enter our manufacturing process. Here too, precise documentation is carried out. The incoming medicinal products are deregistered in the EMVS. We label the packaging with German markings, assign new unique serialisation numbers and a new DataMatrix code, and reregister them with the EMVS. For protection, every medicinal product package is resealed. Our parallel imports are therefore guaranteed to be secured against counterfeiting at all times!
