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BUSINESS THROUGH INNOVATION POINT OF SALE
31
RET AIL PHARMA C Y • MA Y 2020
I
n the past few weeks, we’ve seen
initiatives intended for rollout in the
later months of 2020 successfully
launched months ahead of
schedule. Designs have gone from
drawing board to deployment in record
time and even the development of a
vaccine for COVID-19 has progressed
to human trials a full year ahead of the
expert’s estimates.
In the March issue of
Retail Pharmacy
,
the ‘Control your e–motion’ article
referred to 2020 being a year of
disruption, advising that “the one big
thing this year is going to be the ability
for business to adapt and respond
quickly to change”.
Today, while that change came from
an unexpected source, it’s reassuring
to hear stories of pharmacies that,
whether through careful planning
or a response to the pandemic,
are adapting magnificently.
Driven by a determination to offer
their patients uninterrupted care,
pharmacists have responded with
remarkable initiative and teamwork to
put in place a wide range of changes
to ensure continued service to
customers and therefore communities.
It was clear that change was coming
in pharmacy systems and processes,
but COVID-19 has accelerated the
implementation of that change beyond
anything imaginable. This article looks
at some of those changes, particularly
around point of sale and ePrescribing
solutions, exploring the innovations
and advances that will help you
to maintain an efficient front- and
back-office operation.
In addition, the article looks at
some of the practical steps many
pharmacies across Australia have
embraced, including new, often
innovative ways to keep customers
and staff safe by limiting physical
contact at point of sale while ensuring
patient needs are met.
Pandemic prompts
dynamic developments
By Peter Howard.
Back to the future
Retail Pharmacy
magazine spoke to
Fred IT General Manager eHealth
David Freemantle to understand how
the introduction of social distancing is
impacting the rollout of ePrescribing.
“The hot topic at the moment is
around ePrescribing and I think there’s
currently a lot of confusion in that
space,” he said.
“There are really two streams of
ePrescribing to consider. One is
the part that’s been in place for
approaching two years, around the
whole design of what we term the
ePrescribing solution. The other is
the fast-tracked version, built around
image-based prescribing as recently
approved by the government to meet
the demands of social distancing.
Mr Freemantle says image-based
prescribing, also known as ‘snap and
send’, is an interim short-term concept
where a doctor writes a script and
takes a photograph of it to send to the
pharmacy to dispense.
“Some of the conversations going
around mention that this is part of the
overall ePrescribing project, but it really
isn’t,” he said. “It’s merely designed
to get scripts flowing in the isolation
scenario while people are at home,
still needing their meds.”
If necessity is the mother of invention, recent developments in community pharmacies suggest
a pandemic is the parent of progress.