EDITORIAL

Welcome to Issue 9 of i2P E-Magazine.

Our offering this month is both interesting and diverse.
We lead off with details on the new pharmacy franchise, the Priceline Pharmacy, and I guess, given the normal conservatism of pharmacists, this offering will be viewed cynically. Except for a few of you, who will see opportunity for growth and learning, and who will eventually provide a conduit for some of the new (and sometimes complex) methods of retailing, to find their way into pharmacy at large.
We have generally lagged behind in our business development, and only a few pharmacists realise it.

I would also like to introduce you to Trevor Bamford, a new writer for i2P E-Magazine.
Trevor is not a pharmacist, but he sees opportunity in pharmacy-type alliances.
We think he is one the right track, so we are exposing pharmacists to some health food industry thinking.
If you think about it, pharmacists could form alliances with just about any major group of retailers reflecting a sectional range of products held in the average pharmacy.
Nutritional supplements and health foods is just one, and perhaps some of the Priceline structures could assist in this type of development.
Trevor Bamford is a graduate of Biological Science from the University of Queensland and a student of Natural Medicine at the Australian College of Natural Medicine.
He has been involved in the Complementary Healthcare industry since 1985 through an involvement with his family health food business and through employment with a national distributor organisation.
More recently he has become known as a major proponent of broad industry supply chain reform through E-Commerce and Strategic Planning. He has spent considerable time canvassing the Complementary Medicine (CM) industry to address issues of standards for e-commerce in order to improve efficiency and value in the supply chain, from the retail level up.
Sounds familiar, does it not?

We are also looking at employment issues, particularly locums, and you will find two of our writers with some positive suggestions here.

We also look at payments to pharmacists, and the complexity of a pharmacist's job compared to even a decade ago. Two writers look at different perspectives here.

There is also an innovative report on a system called TrialCards, which is an ethical system for distributing drug samples through pharmacy. This needs to be looked at as a potential component of the BMMS.

Rollo Manning looks at PBS wastage, Heather Pym looks at adding lifestyle factors as a duty of care to patients, Terry Irvine delivers another "Postcard from the Coalface", while Andrew Snow reviews job prospects after graduation.

Well, there is truly some excellent reading to last until next month.

Neil Johnston
October 2002