Prologue
Before I dive head first into Pharmacy and all the elements within it, I want to look firstly the beginners overview of what it is and how one could actually produce an app that could have an effective place in the market. Pharmacy is the clinical health science that links medical science with chemistry and it is charged with the discovery, production, disposal, safe and effective use, and control of medications and drugs.
Definition of Pharmacy;
The art, practice, or profession of preparing, preserving, compounding, and dispensing medical drugs
a: a place where medicines are compounded or dispensedb: Drugstore
The scope of pharmacy practice includes more traditional roles such as compounding and dispensing of medications, and it also includes more modern services related to health care, including clinical services, reviewing medications for safety and efficacy, and providing drug information. Pharmacists, therefore, are the experts on drug therapy and are the primary health professionals who optimize the use of medication for the benefit of the patients.
The use of smartphones is something some Pharmacists use for work, there are a few apps out there already for them to use to help them with their job. What I want to do of course is make an app for the patient to use to order prescriptions and reorder prescriptions through a more seamless process. There are limitations of course, one can’t simply order prescriptions with cause. This would be solved by needing permission by a registered GP to access the service, this would lean more towards making the app for repeat prescriptions only.
Biggest Issue with Repeat Prescriptions
According to Nelson Medical Practice the biggest issue with repeat prescriptions is the amount of time is takes to get them, along with the process and time wait for them to be processed and readied can be one major gripe people have with the process in general. Delays may occur if your medication request is not on your repeat prescription or if your medication request is different from what your doctor has prescribed for you or if your doctor wished to change your medication.
The process takes up to 2 days, part of this could contributed to physical work done by human workers such as the doctors and pharmacists. Making that app that goes straight to a dispensing machine can and would speed up the process for people and would also make a quicker task for the doctors and pharmacists as all they’d have to do is approve the request.