With the support of its Finance Ministry, China will carry out online supervision for 47,595 drugstores in 12 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government in the west of the country by the end of 2012, according to reports from a conference on food and drug supervision and management.

There were 2,819 pharmaceutical factories and 11,895 drug wholesalers that had been put under online supervision by the end of this November, said Sun Xianze, director of Information Center of the State Food and Drug Administration. There was an average of 140 million new drugs that got registered in the supervision system everyday in November.

In the future, online drug supervision will include all types of drugs, cover the production, circulation and consumption processes and be expanded to additional applications.