Rethinking the online pharmacy

[karthik madhava]

Team

As I dwelve in to the topic further, I see a need for us to completely re-think our strategy. Please read through the attached paper that describes the online pharmacy model (http://www.swdsi.org/swdsi07/2007_proceedings/papers/114.pdf).

Few things to note in the paper -

1. Why lot of online pharmacies that started in the dot com era failed or shut down?
   
2. Issues with supply chain?
   
3. Issues maintaining the cost benifit?
   

Few items to ponder about -

Can we rethink the whole strategy? Do we need to solve the supply chain problem?

How about using the existing pharmacy model in India (local friendly neighborhood pharmacist and his supply chain) but tie that up with the doctor and the hospital?

Issue today is that the doctor prescribes the medicine but the local pharmacist cant figure out the exact medicine and the dosage, or doesnt have the stock.

Can we connect the doctor, patient and pharmacist? Can we ensure that the pharmacist has a inventory per patient? Can we ensure we have complete data about the patient available to the doctor?

How about an online digital repository of lab reports, doctors prescription and data about the patient?

Thoughts?

Cheers

Karthik

[rajaram]

Yes Karthik. I think that is a wealth of information while finalizing the strategy. However one point I feel different about is how much a person in India would value the advice given by a website when compared to a doctor. One thing we need to review is the cost of visiting and the procedure / wait time / etc for visiting a doctor between india and the us. This is something we should consider in our survey perhaps.... BTW, I had prepared a set of questions for the survey. I have listed them below. It would be a good idea to add more questions to get a sense of how we can monitize the medical information business perhaps.... BTW I saw an interesting site called www.pharmacyreviewer.com. They are more into providing information. Not sure of the monitization model as unlike general information monitizing based on ads might reduce trust on the web site.

Questions I had prepared

What is your age group?

What is your Profession?

Number of aged dependents over 60 years

Number of Kids

Do you exercise regularly?

Typical average Medicine spend in Rupees

Monthly spend of medicines you buy repeatedly every month

Monthly spend of non Prescription Drugs like Health Drinks, Dietary Supplements etc

Are you part of membership programs of retail medicine distributors (like MedPlus, Apollo, etc)

Does your aged dependants stay with you? 

Do you go to a family doctor who keeps a medical history of all medicines prescribed to you / your dependents?

Does your regular medical store know  medicines that you are allergic to?

Do you buy the recommended medicines made by the Medical Store when medicines in the doctors prescription is not available?

In the last 6 months  have you had to waste medicines bought due to change in prescription,  expiry,  etc?

From where do you usually buy your medicines

Do you usually prefer to buy only the exact count  of tablets prescribed by the doctor

Does your medical store take back medicines you have after the course?

Do you buy medicines before going on  trips?

How many trips have you done last year where you carry medicines?

On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being lowest and 10 highest)  how would you rate your current experience buying medicines from a medical store

Does your employer provide a way to access Internet at your desk?

Do you have Internet Connection at Home?

How do you access the Internet?

Number of time you have shopped online in last 6 months

Payment mode preferred for online purchases

Would you opt to buy medicines from an online pharma store given a choice?

Would you opt for an alternative medicine suggested by a website instead of medicine suggested by the doctor?

What would be your major deciding factor while buying the medicine?

[karthik madhava]

Rajaram, can we create a survey using the above questions and see how people respond?

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Thanks

Karthik

[rajaram]

Hi KArthik

My survey has most of the questions listed below. I am attaching the response as well (around 30 was the response I got)

Regards

Rajaram

[Abhijit Chaudhary]

I think you missed attaching the survey response. 

I would suggest lets each of us present our survey response and roadmap (we have it as part of our assignment) on the weekend and discuss on the bright spot.

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Linkedin - http://in.linkedin.com/pub/abhijit-chaudhary/0/66b/522