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Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals
Drugs and The Internet
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Drugs
and the Internet
Online Pharmacists Serve the Electronic Neighborhood
by Megan
Malugani
Summary Consumers like online ordering
privacy and convenience. Online pharmacists provide more thorough responses.
Prediction: Internet pharmacies will boom.
The jury is still out on the public's reaction to online drugstores,
but pharmacists who work for the e-commerce ventures predict they will
be a huge hit with consumers and a boon for their profession.
Through online pharmacies, consumers can order and receive drugs and refills their
physician has prescribed without waiting in line or even leaving home.
This level of convenience, as well as the privacy afforded through online transactions,
makes Internet pharmacies appealing to customers, says Steve Hall, RPh, manager of
clinical pharmacy operations for drugstore.com.
"Customers provide us with health information and ask us questions [via the Internet
or a toll-free telephone number] that they may not ask in a traditional pharmacy setting
because the pharmacist is rushed or their neighbor is standing right next to them,"
Hall says. For example, online customers are more likely to ask what to do if they miss a
birth control pill or how weight-loss drugs interact with other drugs, Hall says.
Online pharmacists can respond more thoroughly to such inquiries than their retail
counterparts, adds Gayla Waller, RPh, pharmacy information manager for Soma.com. "In the retail setting, I had a phone in one
ear and a customer in the other ear asking where to find the toilet paper. It was hard to
spend quality time with patients answering questions," Waller says. Now, "it's a
good feeling to be able to research a question and find the best answer for someone,"
she says.
The neighborhood pharmacies of yesteryear -- where pharmacists personally knew their
patients and medical conditions -- have all but disappeared. "What has happened over
the years is the personal relationship between pharmacists and patients has deteriorated
because [that system] is not efficient economically," Waller says. Barring the return
of the "ideal" system, online pharmacies are a good option for patients in need
of in-depth information and counseling, she says.
Advanced technology streamlines an online pharmacist's job, Waller points out. At
Soma.com's distribution center, an automated dispensing machine has the capacity to fill
50,000 prescriptions per day. Pharmacists double-check the accuracy of each prescription
by viewing on their computer screens an image of the prescribed drug in the bottle before
it's sent out next to an image of what the drug should look like, Waller says.
"Technology is decreasing the chance for mistakes," she says. "And instead
of hunting for bottles on a shelf, a pharmacist's time is freed up to counsel
patients."
E-commerce is a "legitimate channel" for the distribution of prescription
drugs, Hall says. "It'll do nothing but grow in the future, and as it continues to
grow we'll need more qualified pharmacists involved," he says.
