Pharmacies poised to offer prescription refills online
Ms Sarah Boyd, CEO Guardian Health & Beauty, in Ngee Ann City Guardian Plus store. Photo: Robin Choo
SINGAPORE — Patients here may soon be allowed to order repeat prescription medicines online from retail pharmacies such as Guardian and Watsons and have them delivered to their homes. The move is expected to not only ease the pressure on polyclinics given the tight manpower situation, but also cut overall health costs and improve convenience for patients on continued medication.
In a service believed to be first of its kind here, Guardian told TODAY it is in talks with the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) to launch an online prescription refill service “in a few months”.
This service is specifically for patients who have previously had a face-to-face consultation with doctors at the clinic or hospital, and had their initial health examination recorded. “The regulatory part of it is yet to be sorted out … We have theoretical agreement from the HSA to do repeat prescription fulfilment and are working on a SOP (standard operating procedure), which we will then share with the regulators for them to come back on (with final approvals). We are getting there and are able to launch that in a few months,” Ms Sarah Boyd, chief executive of Guardian Health & Beauty, told TODAY.
Watsons is also in talks with the HSA and the Ministry of Health to sell repeat prescription medicines online, said Mr Dominic Wong, chief operating officer of Watsons Singapore.
Said an MOH spokesperson to TODAY: “The online fulfilment of prescription medications is an innovative concept in our local setting that we will study as we leverage on technology to increase accessibility and convenience for our patients. Safeguards such as patient consent and confidentiality requirements will be key considerations in such innovations.”
New services such as managing and ordering prescriptions online, along with automated refill reminders, could alleviate the growing pressure on the public healthcare system and provide greater flexibility to patients, industry experts say. For pharmacies, it will boost sales and hence is a shot in the arm given the pressure on margins because of high rentals and increasing manpower costs.
“It is something we’re interested in developing as we go through conversations with the HSA,” Ms Boyd said. “We are exploring if there could also be online conversations with doctors who could then recommend over-the-counter products or even pharmacy-only products. Could we then put those in a basket and deliver the same day?”
Some pharmacies here offer patients who seek health-related advice online access to medical professionals, but such digital doctors are not authorised to prescribe medicines online or get them delivered to patients.
Stakeholders in the Republic’s healthcare space, Ms Boyd noted, have started to realise that high street pharmacies can play a more important role in frontline healthcare.
Furthermore, as the role of pharmacies assume greater significance in an economy with an ageing population and constrained manpower, Ms Boyd said, even basic flu and travel vaccinations may eventually be allowed to be conducted by pharmacists at authorised retail pharmacies, albeit under strict guidelines.
It is mandatory for pharmacies to tie up with licensed specialised doctors. Their outlets must also be approved to perform blood- or shots-related jobs like vaccinations.
For instance, Guardian last year teamed up with the Parkway Shenton Group to offer flu and shingles vaccination at selected outlets. The vaccinations are conducted by Parkway Shenton doctors or nurses.
Pharmacies in other developed nations, Ms Boyd noted, play a much larger role in providing care for basic illnesses such as the cold or cough, as well as various lifestyle-disease management such as diabetes, easing some of the high workload off doctors. Some of their models could be replicated here after being customised to suit local needs and regulatory approvals.
Hospitals in Singapore, Ms Boyd added, are already using their pharmacists to conduct medication reviews for patients, particularly those with several health conditions and dependent on more than three to four types of drugs. It is now a question of how the private sector can get involved, be it as a support to public or private hospitals, individual nursing homes or even performing home visits and inviting people to atrium spaces for one-on-one sessions with the pharmacists, she added.
“These conversations are going on with various authorities. We have a big working group that involves various industry stakeholders. We are getting very good traction on this front,” Ms Boyd noted.
