www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | September 2019 | Vol 8 | Issue 9 Page 2069 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Original Research Article Knowledge, attitude and practice regarding generic drugs and branded drugs: a cross sectional study Gyanendra Kumar, Aditi Garg*, Jatinder Kaur Dhillon, Arshad Eranhikkal, Manjakandi Smitha INTRODUCTION Medicines play a main role in the process of human development. The rational utilization of medicines can decrease morbidity and mortality as well as improve quality of life. Medicine pricing is the most crucial element which restricts access to medicines. 1 The steep increase of health care expenditures is one of the biggest problems faced by most of the countries. Affordability of medicines and increased costs has become a major challenge for both governments and patients. In an era of steeply rising health care expenses, generic medicines provide a less expensive alternative to branded medicines. Use of generic drugs can contribute to substantial savings in medicines expenditure and the issue of access and affordability is thus addressed. 2 In order to promote the use of cheaper generic medicines, a generic substitution policy has been implemented in many of the world's developed and developing countries. A generic drug is bioequivalent or identical to a brand name drug in dosage form, route of administration, quality, performance characteristics, safety, strength, and intended use. On expiration of the original product’s patent term protection, other manufacturing companies ABSTRACT Background: Medicines play a main role in the process of human development. The rational utilization of medicines can decrease morbidity and mortality as well as improve quality of life. In an era of steeply rising health care expenses, generic medicines provide a less expensive alternative to branded medicines. Use of generic drugs can contribute to substantial savings in medicines expenditure and the issue of access and affordability is thus addressed. Methods: A sample of 500 patients selected from out patient department was randomly selected. A self-instructed questionnaire was used for the study for the duration of 1 month. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS statistics Version 20 New York, United States. Summary statistics were expressed using mean and standard deviation (SD) for numerical variables (median and interquartile ranges [IQRs] when skewed) and counts and percentages for categorical variables. Results: Participants reported with 17.23% knowledge score, 40.65% attitude score, and 7.96% attitude score. Conclusions: In the study it was found that there is significant correlation between knowledge and attitude whereas no correlation was found between knowledge and practice regarding usage of generic drugs. Keywords: Branded drugs, Generic drugs, Non-proprietary, Proprietary, Multinational companies, Prescriptions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20194118 Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences, New Delhi, India Received: 23 June 2019 Accepted: 31 July 2019 *Correspondence to: Dr. Aditi Garg, Email: aditigarg24.3@ gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.