New technologies pave the way for innovation to drive business practices in pharmacy.
Unfortunately, innovation appears to be a slow process in Australian pharmacies and as a result there is a pent-up frustration among young pharmacists that nothing is happening.
On the other side of the coin there seems to be a majority of pharmacy proprietors who have become frightened to invest in their own abilities.
A lack of innovation means a business that is not progressing – and pharmacy feels as though it is caught in a vice.
At i2P we try and introduce ideas that will drive innovation and in this article we would like to introduce you to a disruptive technology currently being introduced by a company called Cinematique.
Like a lot of disruptive technologies it builds on existing technology and overlays it with a new feature.
And it also has the capacity to disrupt the revenue base for television stations.
It is a system for touch screen video capture of components of products, services or information.
Imagine this:
You have made a decision to set up a private office environment to provide consultations for your patients.
The program is hard to describe in general advertising terms because it is difficult to convey a service attribute – unlike a product you are unable to touch it, smell it or taste it.
You can write about it in detail, but how many of your consumers have become immune to anything that takes longer than three minutes to read or view – and will they understand what you are saying given that the service itself you are trying to provide is also a new innovation.
This is a unique method of remote patient engagement.
TV advertising is probably the closest you would get to being able to promote a pharmacy service concept, but it would probably need to be a small documentary or a news item of reasonable length.
To do the job properly would be cost prohibitive to the average pharmacy.
Enter Cinematique:
They have the ability to overlay a “touch” facility to a video which can be embedded on your website or your social media page.
The touch areas are activated through “pins”, and using Cinematique software you are able to make any part of your video touch-sensitive by adding “pins”.
The videos can be played back via computer, mobile phone or notepad.
Viewers can touch different parts of the video which are then stored as links that contain written information describing the component touched including a price or other descriptor.
The video is also adaptable for physical products so it also has the ability to bring to life a product catalogue that may be delivered to your consumers by email.
Everything you touch is stored on a list containing the link to the item that remains waiting to be explored.
And given the 24/7 access that is available from social media sites plus their enormous catchments, its potential is enormous.
Envisioning a world where viewers can further explore the content seen in a video simply by clicking on it, the company has just launched its editor platform which will allow creators to weave these experiences into their own creations.
This means that if you are in to collaborating with other health professionals or service providers you can give new meaning to the word “collaboration”.
How you want to interact with your local GP or other health professional can be woven into a GP production, or a segment of the GP production spliced into your video.
It opens an entirely new world in an affordable cost-effective way.
The biggest cost is the production cost for your own video, and you can probably envisage a whole host of companies that would want to be part of your video program either through cost subsidisation or the provision of their own vide segments for inclusion with yours.
This format is ideal for health promotion and those pharmacists that have established a patient base through registering their patients and have an email contact to email links to your production will be able to enter a whole new creative approach as to how you present your health offerings.
One of the company founders said:
“We started out with the goal of building a ubiquitous and interactive tool that’s really a seamless addition to any video, not just from a commerce or short form standpoint, but as a platform that can be applied across the board.”
Because touch technology has been adopted by the fashion boutiques for shop windows and mirrors in dressing rooms
Cinematique has found massive success in the fashion sector, an industry that needed a way to effortlessly string items promoted in commercials to a “buy” button.
i2P has previously written about adapting that technology to pharmacy displays in the article titled:
Organise online to succeed offline – the connected world
Heeding the call to action, Cinematique quickly adopted fashion as its first vertical, amassing a list of world-class clients such as Nordstrom, Gap Kids, Victoria’s Secret, Banana Republic, Kate Spade New York, Gucci, Prada, Jimmy Choo and many other retail giants.
Having articulated the long term vision of influencing behavior as it pertains to video, Cinematique’s next step will be to expand into other niches, chiefly the lifestyle and food and beverage industries.
Health has not been noted as yet, but the format is an ideal, particularly as a medium to drive new services and other innovations.
The company will also begin supporting creative ventures like episodic television (both short and long form) and music videos, along with enabling content to be stored in the cloud.
With extensive development put into making the software a collaborative avenue, all the right steps are being taken to ensure that touchable video becomes a societal staple.
For interested businesses, Cinematique offers analytics to provide feedback on how your video is doing. These analytics will enable brands to pivot in real-time based on what resonates most with their customers.
New pharmacy markets such as medical marijuana, will shortly be with us and there is every argument to switch the CBD marijuana component in the form of hemp oil or other similar format, to schedule 3 pharmacist medicine.
Our leadership organisations ought to be looking at this now to fast track this useful product into a pharmacy primary health care arena.
Cinematique processes can deliver consumer information quickly and efficiently to build this market.
Don’t let this innovation pass you by – get involved simply by finding out if any of your staff are interested in video production as the starting point.