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Location Rules Need to be Re-purposed
For the best part of 12 months it has been an open secret that Location Rules for pharmacies would pass muster as being of sufficient “public benefit” for them to remain in place. Even the chair of the King Review very early in his investigation, appeared to favour retention of the rules. For those of…
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Are we obsessed with numbers and forget who our patients are?
We live in a world where patience is a diminishing commodity. We want each day to wrap up like an episode of a TV show. We want to end all arguments by having the perfectly worded Facebook post. We want to work out the solutions to our problems, meet our soul-mate, elect the perfect candidate,…
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Dementia – can we educate and reduce risk?
At the inaugural Swisse Preventative Health Symposium held in Melbourne last Friday, I was privileged to hear a fascinating address by Professor David Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford on “the role of nutrition in the prevention of cognitive impairment”. He classes dementia as a disease – not an inevitable part of ageing and certainly…
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Robots + AI = Rx Replacement?
In an earlier article (Avatars May Take Over Patient Communications – Where to from there?, I discussed the possibility of pharmacists being able to be displaced, especially in the area of drug information delivery to patients. Big Pharma has always wanted to be able to advertise directly to patients because they know the power of…
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A4M Proposes a $1 trillion health cost save for US – why not Australia?
The American Academy for Anti-Ageing (A4M) is a medical group researching and treating the ageing process through utilising the concept of Integrative Medicine. They have come up with a simplified 10 point proposal designed to slash major costs from the health bill in the US – they say reductions of up to $1 trillion are…
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Developing a Single Patient View
From the last business cycle to the current version, pharmacists and community pharmacies have undergone some profound experiences and rapid change. The transition to now is leaving in its wake a sense of indecision and while many opportunities have arisen to improve pharmacist skills and community pharmacy development, only a small number of talented individuals…
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Micro-practice – Future Direction for Pharmacy
I2P has long proposed that pharmacy attracts two types of consumers – customers and patients. A little reflection will resolve this issue because clearly, customers will be attracted to the more commercialised aspects of pharmacy that compete with retailing in general, and the reason why pharmacists see their major competitors as supermarkets and variety stores.…
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How Amazon Will Dominate Global Retail
Amazon is an innovation company that spends an extraordinary amount of money developing research on inventions that can eventually be implanted in the private homes of all consumers. One of its most successful inventions to date is called Echo, and this is a device that was originally envisioned as an intelligent, voice-controlled household appliance that…
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Patient Navigation – An old-new Opportunity for Pharmacists
i2P has commented before that community pharmacy has (and still is) the epicentre for primary health care. In many ways it was the original patient-centred home and it had a market share approaching 70 percent in the mid to late 1970’s when it was first surveyed. The entry point to primary health care within community…
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Do we do enough for our statin patients?
Even though statins are the “go-to” therapy for lowering “bad” cholesterol, other treatments can effectively reduce the risk of future heart problems according to a new evidence review. The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that a heart-healthy diet can confer the same level of heart health protection as statins. When we dispense a…