You just visited your doctor and found out, to your dismay, that the medication you need will bite a good chunk out of your wallet. Now, your doctor certainly has good reason to prescribe the drugs, but cheaper generic alternatives might help you cut down on your medical bills.

Here are three tech tools which provide information on the brands prescribed by your doctor and a list of other substitutable ones, along with their prices.

The same, but cheaper A strip of Glaxo’s Crocin retails at about ₹12, even as there are brands which sell for half that price. This is because the promotional expenses incurred by pharmaceutical companies are loaded on to the selling price; the underlying drug is, however, the same.

Online portal medguideindia.com , an initiative by Vinod Kumar Memorial Charitable Trust, provides comprehensive information on various drugs. All you need to do is log into the portal and search for the drug, either by its brand name or generic name.

On this portal, you can get a comprehensive list of brands of the same underlying molecule that are currently available in the market. Also listed is information about the manufacturer and the price. Likewise, you can also search and retrieve the information on the drug’s contraindication, side-effects and precautions by just providing the drug’s common name or specific brand name.

In addition to drugs, the medguideindia portal provides information about health insurance policies and immunisation.

For those who don’t have access to the internet, medguideindia.com also provides short messaging services (SMS) facility. All you need to do is sent a text message to 9243342000.

Type in @mgi followed by the brand name in the message box (after a space) and send it to the above mentioned number. For instance, if you want information about allegra, you need to type @mgi allegra. Likewise, to get the names and prices of alternative drugs to allegra, you need to type @mgi <space> allegra <space> alt.

The app way Healthkart Plus, an online pharmacy, provides information on drugs, side-effects, interactions and cheaper substitutes. Healthkart also has a mobile app for Android and Windows users.

These apart, there are other standalone mobile apps which can help you figure out a cheaper alternative to brands you have been prescribed. Drug Index and Guide have prescription and safety information on 30,000 brands and over 2000 drugs. This app is available offline too. My Dawai is yet another mobile app which provides similarly useful information.

Of course, before you make any switch, it's best to clear it with your doctor.

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