The Ministry of Health has introduced a new joint development with Kazakhtelecom – a service for checking medicine prices in the Naqty Onim app. However, the same functionality has existed for more than six years in the DariKZ app, created by the ministry itself without the involvement of private companies.
As the publication Exclusive.kz has established, back in 2019 the National Centre for Expertise of Medicines and Medical Devices (NCEMD) launched the DariKZ app. It allowed users to check maximum prices for medicines, find out whether drugs required a prescription, and submit complaints about pharmacies.
"Users who download the app have access to information on dosage/concentration, shelf life, and special characteristics of the drug, whether it is an original or a generic, and whether it is dispensed on prescription or over the counter," the statement said.
At the same time, the DariKZ app was mentioned in international reports as a positive example of digital government services. In 2020, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation included it in the Bank of Best Practices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and in 2021 UNICEF recognised DariKZ as a successful tool that could be implemented in other countries.
Until February of this year, the Ministry of Health continued to officially recommend that citizens use DariKZ to complain about inflated prices. The most recent publications with instructions on using the service are dated 8 November — they are posted on the pages of the National Centre for Expertise of Medicines and Medical Devices (NCEMD), the Committee for Medical and Pharmaceutical Control, and the Country Office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Kazakhstan.
The DariKZ app is currently unavailable on Google Play, but remains in the App Store when the region is set to Kazakhstan. No official notices about its closure or the transfer of its functions have been published.
Despite this, on 12 November the Ministry of Health announced the launch of a "new" price-checking service in the Naqty Onim app, presenting the initiative as a joint effort with Kazakhtelecom.
"The Ministry of Health, together with Kazakhtelecom, has launched a digital service in the Naqty Onim app, where every citizen can check the maximum price of a medicine and also submit a complaint about inflated prices," the ministry's statement said.
However, the publication made no mention that an identical service had already been operating within DariKZ since 2019.
It has become known that the Naqty Onim app is owned by a subsidiary of Kazakhtelecom — LLP "Centre for Digital Economy Development". Since 2020, the organisation has been the sole operator of product marking and traceability, earning revenue from fees charged to market participants for each transaction involving marked products.
In January of last year, the FBRK editorial team reported that Kazakhstan had abandoned the international Medical Value Chain (MVC) platform, used in 32 countries and offered to the state free of charge.
Instead, the inter-agency commission chose Kazakhtelecom as the operator, tasking it with creating its own marking system and related applications, including Naqty Onim. The amount spent on development and the size of transaction fees for the market were not disclosed.
The Ministry of Health now claims that "all medicines have been subject to marking since July 2024" and that this ensures "traceability from the factory to the pharmacy." However, the previously created DariKZ performed the same functions — without a marking system and without the involvement of commercial operators.
Furthermore, checking maximum medicine prices is not actually linked to product marking: data on maximum prices is available in a publicly accessible ministry order published in the information and legal system of the Republic of Kazakhstan's regulatory legal acts.