Now that the largest two GP prescribing software system suppliers have just recently been given national roll out authority for the Electronic Prescription System Release 2 (EPSR2), it seems reasonable to expect to see Electronic prescribing really get going this year. (See separate article)
With Electronic prescribing it is certain that the level of interest and activity in Internet pharmacy will increase. This form of exempt pharmacy contract has not been removed, so the competition will come not only from existing Internet contractors but also from additional new ones. In 2011 it was 100 hour pharmacies that attracted much anger, this year it is likely that Internet pharmacies will become the source of business loss from contractors who are not ready to compete. In order to compete it is necessary, at the very least, to get patients signed up to your pharmacy as their nominated pharmacy for EPS. Also you need to to be ready with R2 accredited pharmacy software and have your staff trained to go with EPSR2 the moment electronic prescriptions start arriving, and of course have a delivery service available too! If you have not refreshed your web site recently that too would be a worthwhile activity, and starting writing blog articles of interest to your patients and customers would help you still further.
My view is that there will be significant additional competition from companies like Pharmacy 2U (P2U) who have last year been funding research into patient’s propensity to collect repeat prescriptions. This new found interest in practice research is unlikely to be purely charitable. I would expect to see some vigorous marketing by such organisations, not only to their existing OTC purchase customers but also to the wider UK audience whom they could easily service electronically.
In addition to all the above factors, suggesting 2012 will be the year that Internet pharmacy really takes off, the EU commission published on 11th January 2012 a communication on building a “coherent framework for building trust in the Digital single market for e-commerce and on-line services”. The essence of this new communication seems to be NOT to have the EU build another mountain of red tape hindering Internet business, but the EU want to foster a faster growth rate of EU Internet business, which in 2010 was only 3% of total EU trade.
The EU communication sets out an action plan to overcome the perceived obstacles to EU Internet trade with the aim of doubling the contribution of e-commerce to the EU economy, so there is support for internet trade from Brussels too .