It’s hard to save time with technology when it takes as long, if not longer, to explain the technology to your patients than just getting on with meeting their needs there and then. The last 10 years or so have been a tricky period, when most of the population you serve, especially those heavy users of pharmacy services in the 60-plus demographic, were not very tech-literate. 

Fortunately, the percentage of the population who are fluent with technology is growing. Which means, increasingly, that you can automate processes for high volume, low margin transactions to be able to concentrate your time and efforts on the high margin services, which are becoming a larger slice of the currently frozen global sum. But here’s the twist. Here’s why the future of pharmacy starts online: 

You can automate and streamline until you have all the free time in the world, but then what? What comes next? You’ve got the time to provide services, but you may be standing around wondering why no one is coming in for all those (high margin) clinics you offer. And it won’t be long before you realise that you need to turn your attention to how the patients who are looking for those clinics and services find you. 

The reality is that people, including patients, start their searches online. And that’s the reason the future of pharmacy starts online. It’s not because it makes your life easier (although it does). It’s because that’s where your patients are looking for help.

Looking means finding 

Community pharmacy is in a bind. With other avenues closed off or at the very least more difficult to access, patients are wanting clinical services and pharmacies are offering them, but they aren’t finding each other. If pharmacy is to achieve its goal of being a primary point of care and a real gateway into the NHS, then it has to be the path of least resistance for patients. 

But the trouble is, and we see it time and again, it appears that very few people know that the pharmacy path exists. How can we change that? 

Old school, you might have put signposts up around the town, directing people to you, showing them you’re the place to go. Today, the place where everyone can see those signposts is online.