Digital Health And The Pharmacy: A Prescription For Success (John Nosta)

Digital Health And The Pharmacy: A Prescription For Success

Much has been written about the emergence of digital health, the changing role of the physician and the more active role that patients will be taking in care. But there’s one voice that is occasionally missing from the discussion and it very well may be one of the most important voices in the changing health care environment–the pharmacist.

Donald Hackett & Lou Scalpati have been in the healthcare space for nearly 25 years. With their latest venture, RxWiki, Inc. Don and Lou are focusing on one trend they believe is here to stay—digitally connecting patients to their pharmacist.  The big question was how the company would leverage its innovative platforms and health content to change the way pharmacists and patients communicate. The answer has been two-part: trusted, pharmacist-created content and synchronized digital distribution. Or simply put, digital health was now part of the pharmacy experience.  Disclosure:  I have consulted with RxWiki in the past.

RxWiki has developed a suite of digital solutions that enables pharmacies and pharmacists to reach and engage patients with actionable news and medication information through a number of media distribution outlets and digital devices.

RxWiki Digital Pharmacist™ Solutions

Social Media

With RxWiki’s social media solutions, pharmacists can share the latest health and medication news directly on their social media channels. RxWiki creates and customizes social properties for pharmacies and pharmacists on Google GOOG -0.04%+, Facebook FB +1.59%, and Twitter and automatically updates each page with timely, trusted RxWiki content. RxWiki also optimizes each page’s settings, language and keywords to maximize visibility.

Mobile

RxWiki’s custom mobile apps are branded for each pharmacy. Patients can access the news that’s important to them, at any time, with customizable health and medication news feeds delivered to their smartphones. Each custom app also includes a click-to-call feature that connects patients directly with their pharmacy.

Website

RxWiki also offers news and search tools to enhance functionality on pharmacists’ existing websites. RxWiki’s Active News feature keeps website content fresh with the latest medication and health news. Pharmacies can also integrate RxWiki’s search widget to enable patients to access RxWiki content directly from their website.

“As pharmacists transition into their new roles as the ‘primary-care-pharmacist,’ our goal is to empower them with the tools to extend their real-world patient relationships into the digital landscape,” Hackett said. “RxWiki has recently partnered with the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) to offer community pharmacists the content and tools needed to stay relevant with patients outside of the pharmacy. Digitally engaged patients are generating 6x more revenue than ‘in-store only’ patients.”

RxWiki’s Digital Pharmacist™ offering includes website, social media, and mobile solutions that enable pharmacists to easily deliver medication news and information to patients at any time, on any digital device. RxWiki is embracing the power of social media and mobile devices to share content with patients and bring pharmacists into the digital conversation. Social media, in particular, has developed into a space where RxWiki brings pharmacists and patients together to communicate and collaborate.

RxWiki’s Digital Pharmacist solutions also serve as marketing tools for pharmacies, enabling pharmacists to increase brand awareness, attract new customers, and strengthen relationships with existing patients. “It’s a hassle-free way to increase your pharmacy’s digital presence, save time and money, and build patient loyalty,” said NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey, Pharmacist, MBA.“RxWiki’s content is top-notch, written by licensed pharmacists for patients on an 8th grade reading level. It is designed to broaden your relationship with your patients and keep a healthy conversation going,” he added.

RxWiki publishes the leading digital medication encyclopedia created by pharmacists, for patients. From original medication news to FDA alerts and manufacturer updates, RxWiki’s pharmacist-created content is written is positive, neutral language targeted to an 8th grade reading level. RxWiki also publishes video news and information segments that are integrated within relevant text to provide patients with a versatile multimedia experience.

“RxWiki’s patient-centric publishing model focuses on transparency, velocity, and accessibility. Our editorial team strives to deliver trusted, multimedia medication news and information within hours, not weeks, of when new research is released,” Hackett said.

As I’ve presented in the past, 2013 is the year of digital health.  And it seems that the reality is now taking hold in the pharmacy too. From advice to device, the pharmacy has always represented a first line of defense for health information and wellness.  The digital revolution shouldn’t diminish this much, but further entrench the pharmacy practice as an essential component of care–with a human touch and a digital reach. For more information, go to http://www.rxwiki.com/pharmacists/ncpa

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Mapping the Future of Government Services (UPDATED)

Traditionally, government has done a terrible job of presenting information - lists in silos rather than maps in systems.

I have suggested that it's possible to do better by designing service presentation in a way that's intuitive for end-users.

Glad to see someone's listening.

UPDATED: Better than listening - it's nice to see people responding, too.  There are more such initiatives out there, too.  It's a Bold New World...

UPDATED-ER: Maps, yes, but if there's way to bring data to life, that's even better.  People relate to images and motion better than they do to static, highly-contextualized symbols (like letters or numbers) on a page.

Love the fact that so many people are looking for ways to bridge the gaps between us, and between our information.  After all, it's through understanding is the place where diversity meets and innovation happens, creating that better world we all crave.

Service Aggregates - Systems, not Silos

We consciously design items for efficiency and intuitive use - it's time we start doing the same thing with service systems.



Operation: Integrate All the Things!

 

A few nights ago, I was sitting on my couch about to get down with a bottle of wine and some Netflix. I grabbed my phone and opened the XBox SmartGlass app, which basically works like a virtual game-slash-remote controller. As I was mindlessly scrolling, my dude and roommate — an audio engineer — walked in with his iPad, frustrated and annoyed that this new interface app he’d downloaded allowed him to create and manipulate different sounds, but didn’t automatically sync up with his main program, or allow him to save audio files to Dropbox.

 

Totally ridiculous, I thought. I’m a social media manager for a software company, and if there’s anything I know, it’s that there’s little point to using multiple tools if they don’t work together. First world problems, right? Even so, if we’re supposed to be working towards a more intelligent internet — especially in an era of unapologetic demands for instant gratification — we have to anticipate that people expect everything (and I do mean everything) to integrate and operate seamlessly, regardless of platform, device, or even location.

The Privilege of a Never-ending Curve

There’s a reason I mentioned SmartGlass. In my world, being able to use a phone to control my TV is a given, and you’d better believe I’m throwing a fit if I have to take more than one photo of a check in order to deposit it. We’re technologically spoiled, yes, but if history serves, it’s always the most innovative solutions that are born from the pursuit of efficiency, convenience, and an inherent need to take human genius to the very edge of inception.

 

Product and service integration is a huge part of that in our ever-more-digital world, and it’s forcing us all into an environment rife with opportunity and driven by assumption. It’s not quite like when I tried to lock my apartment door with my automatic car key, but the shock of non-integrated systems is always, at best, unpleasant and confusing — we’re no longer equipped to comprehend disparity, and the vast majority of consumers depend upon all industries to understand that, avoid it, and visualize solutions before they’ve become problems.

 

Deep-seated psychological issue? Maybe. But what’s kind of beautiful about this never-ending curve everyone’s so desperate to stay ahead of is that it’s a catalyst for inspiration. It’s no longer an option to wait it out and jump on the bandwagon when it feels safe and secure to do so. And, as the market ramps up its demand for confluence, we’re watching the interconnectivity and interoperability of platforms and applications explode into mainstream development tactics. The result is an impact on the internet-centric market that’s still strictly tied to supply and demand, but that’s also more consumer-focused than it’s ever been — a shift of power that’s opened up tons of new room for exploration, testing, and valuable failures.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Obviously, consumers don’t expect companies to be clairvoyant in the literal sense, but it’s important that organizations don’t rely too heavily on market empathy, either. Mainly because it doesn’t really have any, but also because the average customer doesn’t always consider themselves responsible for driving invention. A business creates a new toy or cool service and they adopt it; meanwhile the business is combing the market for clues and patterns, simultaneously dreading and dependent on peer-review threads.

 

Regardless of the fact that new options continuously pop up,  integration strategies — and the protocol to execute them — have to be at the heart of all business initiatives, particularly those that are web, mobile, and cloud-based. And that can be exceptionally intimidating for enterprise architects and project managers, two groups of industry players facing a level of disruption that’s changing more than how they think about product expansion; it’s changing how they conceive of what they do, period.

 

Dave West, CPO for Tasktop Technologies Inc. and former president and research director at Forrester, said in arecent Q&A with TechTarget that application integration problems are a primary reason why businesses — and the aforementioned architects and project managers — “can’t deliver business innovation at the speed demanded by customers using all these application platforms.” He cites three major shifts in consumer behaviors for this issue: the maturation of SOA, or service-oriented architecture, which encourages developers to create with collaboration in mind; the similar acceptance of platforms as a service (PaaS — think companies like Zapier and CloudBees); and the total outbreak of new devices and the rise of mobile technology.

 

What this means is that integration architects can quickly turn into human roadblocks if they’re not central to strategy conception, and project managers lose out on their favorite thing — control. Both roles have to maintain a more flexible, react-and-respond attitude towards their work, and that’s miles away from what these forever-prepared folks are used to. That’s unfortunate news for companies that are hesitant to let go of honeymoon-era approaches, but it’s better to be unsure than be unheard, right?

 

As a social media manager, I’m less concerned with this high-level stuff in my day-to-day, but it affects me nonetheless. I need my aggregate services, the ability to deploy content across platforms, and I have to be able to do it whether I’m pushing my way onto a crowded train or grabbing lunch with a client. The perpetual connectivity of the modern world demands our constant attention. And so, my dear, sweet, resistant creators, open your eyes and brace yourselves. There’s an electric, impatient urgency forcing the integration revolution, and the market doesn’t really care if we’re ready for it or not.