SEPTEMBER ,Edition # 33, 2001

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How many telephones do you have in the pharmacy?
Do any double up as fax machines?
Worse, any double up as communication lines to back room PCs or dispensary computer modems?
Do your customers remark that your phone lines are always engaged?
Why is that bad?
The telephone is a perfect tool for what it is designed to do, exchange voice messages.
And, its use by machines should not result in absorbing prime telephone time.
It isn't too good for large, sustained periods of data exchange.
Primarily because it is slow when used for data transfer, real slow. In the old days sticking the cup of the acoustic coupler to transmit the PDE order was seen as magic.
Today, the memory of this seems archaic as we routinely use modems to transmit and receive data from the wholesaler and/or updates from the dispensary system vendor.
This is all about to change.
As the acoustic coupler gave way to modems, so too will broad band communication replace the humble phone line as the permanent telecommunication link.
The change that you will need to make, so the pharmacy becomes virtually 'online' on a seven day, twenty-four hour basis.
That is, using a dedicated wide band e.commerce 'pipe' transferring data at high speed in and out of your business machines.
With the coming Better Medicine Management System (BMMS), for example, the growth in the daily use of electronic prescriptions is inevitable.
If patients/customers can, in the near future, access their BMMS records online, it will make sense that the creators of these patient records, GPs and pharmacy, will need to be able to process this encrypted data in volume and at speed.
And that is not what the normal phone line is a designed to do.
The comparison is amazing.
Here in my (home) office I regularly exchange very large files with folks who are still using the normal phone line. What takes me seconds or minutes, at worst, to transmit or receive, can tie their phone lines up for tens of minutes, sometimes an hour or so.
This is a retail pharmacy customer service issue.
Plain and simple.
E.commerce is becoming a part of a pharmacy service level component.
Perhaps more than most.
Unlike all other 'retailers', a pharmacy will have to be state of the art, in communications terms, as e.scripts will demand it.
BMMS will expect it and later on Healthconnect will probably make it mandatory.
I do not intend to give a technical paper on the attributes and performance level choices between the various technologies. In many cases the 'choice' will not be there to be made. It will be decided rather on whether you are east of the great divide or west of the divide.
A city or the bush sort of thing.
What Telstra, Optus and the other broad band carriers have on offer in your area will often be limited, more so if you are outside the greater metropolitan areas.
If you are fortunate to have the Foxtel or Optus cable running past the front door, you are in luck.
I believe that of all the technology options, the cable is 'the one'.
So if you are in Willoughby, get a cable connection.
If you are in Warialda, you will have to consider Plans B and C.
I also expect shopping malls to install very large communication 'pipes' for all the tenants.
This has good news and a perhaps not so good news factor.
The good news is that the link will be state of the art and reasonably cheap (one would expect) as many businesses amortise the cost of the infrastructure.
The bad news is that the landlord may see this is another revenue opportunity to add to the percentage in the rent.
However, as pharmacy and medical tenants will be required to operate at the maximum level of patient privacy, security and the subsequently necessary encryption technologies, maybe the sharing of a 'commercial pipe' will not be acceptable.
Who knows?
No one knows at the present time.
This is the fun and fear that is inherent in the emerging world of b2b e.commerce. We are on the Internet bus but we still do not know the destination nor what finally awaits us a few years down the e.commerce road. What we do know is that the telephone line is and will become more inadequate to handle the flow of traffic in and out of pharmacy, very soon.
With the highly probable chance that the pharmacy will be part of the world of web browsing, then to be able to post and recover web-based material at warp speed will be a bonus. So, if the cable runs past the door, I would hook it up to your backroom and/or dispensary computer now.
You can even use it simultaneously for PAY-TV.
Why not?
There is a lot of 'business' information on these services and perhaps that is a bonus also.
For those without a cable at the door, the first step is to contact your PC or dispensary computer vendor.
Perhaps before you call the wholesaler.
They are your service providers and you will need this service from them sooner than later. So get them to do the legwork and report back with various recommendations.
Of course if you are part of a banner group we might hope than someone in head office is already working on this issue!
Maybe, maybe not.
Give them a call too.
Finally the HIC has an excellent web site that explains the BMMS program.
On the site you will find the technical information on communication requirements - so click on to http://www.hic.gov.au and get a glimpse of your online future. Remember, as you download the information, particularly the images, from the HIC site, it will be zillion times faster once you are broad band enabled.
Just do it!
Ends

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