The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7422 p447
14 October 2006

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· E-commerce
· EPS
· Pfizer products (3)
· Drug misuse
· Pharmacy ownership
· Statutory Committee
· The profession
· Superdrug
· Retention fee
· Job satisfaction

Letters to the Editor

E-commerce

Pharmacy electronic trading comes of age

From Mr R. D. Miles, MRPharmS

The announcement that pharmaceutical wholesalers and manufacturers have agreed to invest in the Pharmacy Messaging Service is to be greatly welcomed (PJ, 7 October, p421) especially since it is almost 21 years since the visionary “Trading for the future” project, which showed the enormous potential benefit of electronic trading.

The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency has invested in producing and publishing case studies showing the benefits of using e-commerce (see www.pasa.doh.gov.uk). Reduced errors, more effective use of staff, shortened “purchase to pay” times can all be expected. It is now imperative that pharmacists in secondary care invest time and effort to adopt e-commerce as the way hospitals do business.

Hospital pharmacy purchasing managers must respond to the challenges of:

· Realising the benefits of automation

· Coping with the financial pressures to reduce costs of holding stock while the unit price of new drugs escalates

· Maximising the use of storage space, which is seen as an expense that modern hospital buildings can do without

· Using human resources to maximum potential

· Improving financial management and budgetary control

Hospital pharmacists have by and large failed to move forward from “Trading for the future”. We now have another stimulus to modernise and if we do not make the change there are many professional purchasing staff and commercial companies keen to take away our role of getting medicines to patients.

Roger D. Miles
Regional Specialist Procurement Pharmacist (North West)
Bolton

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