The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7253 p835
14 June 2003

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AAH Pharmaceuticals and Vantage convention 2003

Technology will transform pharmacy...[more]

New services bring professional and business advantages for pharmacists...[more]

Technology will transform pharmacy

The latest developments in information technology will change how pharmacists work, BILL FELKEY, associate professor at Auburn University, Alabama, told participants. "Isn't it strange, in this age of information, that we are still using illegibly scrawled little pieces of paper to do transactions that are so important (ie, fill prescriptions)," he asked.

During the convention, Professor Felkey painted a picture of pharmacy where each pharmacist is equipped with a personal digital assistant (PDA), a wireless earpiece, a virtual keyboard (a gadget that allows typing without a keyboard) and even a hard drive carried on a key ring. Pharmacists would receive electronic prescriptions and robots would dispense them. Patient information leaflets could be stored on PDAs and printed on demand. Over 80 per cent of people are visual learners and pharmacists would be able to advise patients by showing short films (eg, how to use a blood glucose machine) on their PDAs.

Internet connections allow payment claims to be processed at a greater rate. This is already being used in the United States, where almost all pharmacies are on the internet, and up to six prescriptions can be sent and paid for in up to 12 seconds. Technology could even be applied to compliance problems. For example, a gadget could be used to alert a carer if an elderly patient who lives alone has not taken his or her medicine.

It has been found that health care professionals, even from the most narrow specialties, need to read 14 articles a day to keep up to date but, according to Professor Felkey, instead of sifting through mountains of published material, pharmacists would use e-services to provide them with the most relevant information. Space in the pharmacy would no longer be taken up by books because pharmacists would have several reference compendia (updated daily) at their fingertips on their PDAs. Continuing professional development packages with titles such as "How to use PDAs in pharmacy practice" would be the norm.

Technology will give pharmacists time to provide more professional services, in line with government aims, and it could also be used to market these services to patients. For those who want to start charging for services, but are concerned that patients will not want to pay for something that was previously provided for free, Professor Felkey suggested using technology to package the service to make it so exciting and so different from the old service, that people will want it.

On the other hand, exploiting technological advances is not without problems, for example, the abundance of inaccurate health information available on the internet. Commenting on the proposal that in the United Kingdom pharmacists will have restricted access to electronic medication records, Professor Felkey said that this would mean that pharmacists are "kept out of the loop". In the US, the patient can decide who has access to his or her records. If this principle were adopted in the UK, pharmacists would need to help patients understand the importance of them having full access to records, he added. As for the system for electronic transfer of prescriptions, Professor Felkey questioned whether patients really would be the ones who chose which pharmacy their prescriptions were sent to — if the choice is made at the doctor's surgery, what influence would the receptionist have on where the prescription is sent?

E-pharmacy

Professor Felkey went on to describe how e-pharmacy matures through five stages:

• Publish Web awareness and presence can be built by publishing static information (eg, services offered)

• Interact People can be engaged beyond just reading text on a screen if asked to interact with the pharmacy (eg, by providing health assessments for people to do)

• Transact A means of doing transactions over the web can be provided and this could encourage loyalty and widen the customer base

• Integrate People could be allowed to have their own webpage integrated into the pharmacy management system so that both patient and pharmacist can view an individual profile of all medicines, vitamins and herbal products dispensed or purchased at the pharmacy

• Transform New ways of using the internet in being more efficient and effective could be explored

New services bring professional and business advantages for pharmacists

Playing a professional role and bringing in revenue do not have to be mutually exclusive, TERRY MAGUIRE, vice-chairman of PharmacyHealthLink, told participants. Dr Maguire described a scheme for people with diabetes run in his pharmacy in Belfast. Using the pharmacy's patient medication records, he found that people with type 2 diabetes had prescriptions for 52 items each year compared with 70 items for patients with type 1 diabetes and six items for patients without diabetes. The number of visits to the pharmacy by each patient type was 17, 24 and six, respectively.

Extra visits resulted in extra spending and researchers found that, for the average pharmacy, patients with diabetes bring an extra £10,000 of income each year. "From a purely business context, people with diabetes are valuable patients," Dr Maguire said.

Promotional activities included distributing educational leaflets, a special window display, features in local papers, working with diabetes nurses, special offers on blood glucose meters and sending letters to current patients. The service worked on both a professional and a business level, Dr Maguire said. Over three months, there were 11 medication changes, the pharmacy gained 12 new patients and six patients also took smoking cessation advice and stopped smoking. The pharmacy sold 70 blood glucose meters during three months compared with only two sold in the 12 months previous to the service. Finally, the pharmacists involved claimed more job satisfaction.

The Journal attended the AAH/ Vantage convention courtesy of AAH Pharmaceuticals Ltd