Code4SA/medicine-price-registry

An API on the South African Single Exit Price mechanism for medicines Medicine Price Registry ======================= Retail medicine prices are regulated in South Africa through the Single Exit Price Mechanism. These prices are published on a regular basis at mpr.gov.za. The information is only available in a large and unwieldy excel spreadsheet making it inaccessible to casual users. This projects builds an API and basic user interface to query this database. You can find a running instance at medicineprices.org.za. A typical use-case would be for a consumer to look for alternative products for a particular medicine, often generic medicines can be much cheaper than the branded product. Another use-case allows consumers to ensure that they are not being overcharged for their medicines. This database publishes the maximum price at which a medicine can be sold. A pharmacy cannot legally increase the price of a particular medicine above the price listed here. Updating the database --------------------- 1. Download the latest public domain NAPPI file from medikredit.co.za wget medikredit.co.za -P data/nappi_codes unzip data/nappi_codes/PUBDOM.zip -d data/nappi_codes/ 2. Download the latest SEP file a. visit health.gov.za b. click on Databases c. Download the Database Of Medicine Prices file with the latest date d. move it to the `data` directory 3. Run the import docker compose run --rm web python manage.py loadsepdata data/LatestSEPDatabase....xlsx 4. Check that the updates look sensible. 5. Commit the changes to mpr.db in git 6. Deploy the changes. API --- In addition to providing this simple web interface, we make available a rudimentary API that you can use to access the most up-to-date prices to be used in third party applications. ### Version 2 Basic search e.g. medicineprices.org.za A more comprehensive search …