Steve Bieszczat is senior VP of marketing at Epicor. He has been with the company for 25 years and has worked with POS for all of that time. He led the initiative to take Epicor into the pharmacy market, because he thought the market was under-served at POS. In this interview with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood, Bieszczat talks about how he sees POS encompassing inventory, price, and margin management, as well as reporting.  He outlines ...

Integra has built the dominant document software product over recent years, and now there's been a big advance with the company's release of DocuTrack v5. In this interview with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood, Louie Foster, director of product management, talks about the four year process of developing this newest version, which has been built from the ground up, and explains how it represents a shift in the company's approach, including a move to a new deployment platform and a new, more flexible PDF management tool.

Find out what new products and services technology vendors have on the agenda for the year and where they will make enhancements in their existing portfolios.

The National Community Pharmacists Association held its 114th Annual Convention and Trade Exposition in October in San Diego. Pharmacists had several different educational programming tracks to follow. Saturday once again featured a technology seminar, with presentations on track-and-trace, switch-based technology, data mining, EPCS, and keeping up with mobile technology, as well as a full track of programming on adherence, including a breakout session with technology vendors offering services in this area. NCPA’s long-term care division offered a number of opportunities for members to learn, from presentations about the latest innovations from several ...

Over the summer, ComputerTalk’s Maggie Lockwood spent an afternoon at TeleManager headquarters in Newark, N.J., to talk cloud services and the future of pharmacist-patient communication with TeleManager cofounders Paul Kobylevsky and Val Gurovich. During 15 years in the industry, Kobylevsky and Gurovich have always watched the evolving technology with a view to how it can apply to the pharmacy. With the growth in social media and cloud-based options, Kobylevsky and Gurovich develop TeleManager’s offerings, such as the iRefill Connect suite and new Facebook app, with the pharmacy’s patients in mind. TeleManager has five ...

Matt Reichert is CEO of Health Market Science, a provider of solutions that leverage the industry's most comprehensive and accurate prescriber database. Reichert has managed the launch of several new products, overseen aggressive revenue growth at the company, and been instrumental in developing the infrastructure and staff to support company growth. Reichert sat down recently with John Becker, representing ComputerTalk, to discuss the new provider data requirements defined in CMS-4157 and how the industry ...

Nathan Mott, president of McKesson Pharmacy Systems and Automation, has been with McKesson for over 17 years and is currently responsible for all retail pharmacy software and automation. Joe Montler is VP of marketing strategy and business development for McKesson Pharmacy Systems and Automation. ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood spoke with both during ideaShare 2012 about trends in technology and opportunities for community pharmacy.

Nantucket Pharmacy, on the Massachusetts island's cobblestoned Main Street, has served residents year-round since the 1930s, according to owner Allan Bell, R.Ph. Bell, who moved to Nantucket from New Jersey 35 years ago, said during a busy summer day that there had been two pharmacies next to each other at one point. In 1986 he bought the other pharmacy, but the name of the pharmacy is still on the building's cornerstone.

Nantucket Pharmacy packs a lot into 1,200 square feet, and features wood cabinets filled with a full-range of health and beautify brands as well as beach-town-specific ...

ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood got the chance to check in with Chuck Wilson, VP of operations for Health Mart, at ideaShare 2012. Wilson grew up in a family that owned an independent pharmacy and gained experience working in operations for several of the big chains, including a 13-year stint at Target, during which he grew the pharmacy business from 114 to 1,400 locations and studied the ins and outs of branding and running retail establishments. In this interview, he talks about what's been happening with Health Mart over the last year and plans to help support community pharmacies as ...

Lathe Bigler serves as Emdeon's senior director of clinical services for the pharmacy services division. He has more than 15 years of experience in healthcare and information technology. He recently spoke with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood about the latest efforts to improve the availability of patients' health and medication information across the healthcare continuum.

Shay Reid is VP of operations for AmerisourceBergen. A ten-year ABC veteran, Reid is responsible for operational strategy development and for implementing technology and processes that help ensure patient safety, cost-effectiveness, and on-time delivery to more than 20,000 pharmacies and other healthcare providers. Reid played a key role in defining ABC's efforts to identify solutions for Florida pedigree and California track-and-trace. Most recently, Reid worked alongside industry colleagues in the Prescription Drug Security Alliance (PDSA) to identify ...

David Abrams has developed extensive expertise in retail over the course of his career, starting in 1978 when he became the assistant manager of his first RadioShack. He continued with that company for 11 years and then spent two to three years each with Bradlees, Caldors, Ames, Bed Bath & Beyond, TJ Maxx, and CVS before moving to Sarasota, Fla., and beginning to work for Davidson Drugs, where he's been with for the past ten years. He ...

An interview with Micro Merchant Systems founder Akbar Merchant.

Medication adherence has a prominent role in the current national conversation about healthcare. In this interview FLAVORx CEO Stu Amos talks with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood about the role flavoring liquid medications can play in promoting adherence, and some of the challenges to making this process more efficient in order to increase its availability.

The McCoys were generous enough to provide a number of examples that show just the sorts of errors they are seeing in the e-prescriptions coming into their pharmacy.  Read on to see the prescription as received and the McCoys' comments. If you haven't read the story in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue, titled "The E-Prescribing Learning Curve: One Pharmacy's Experience," you can find it <...

ScriptChek was founded a little over eight years ago when CEO Stacy Kaufman saw an opportunity to improve how well patients understand their prescription medications. First came the company's extended tab label, which provides more real estate for printing information. The most recent development is a 2-D printable image library that can be printed on vial labels and patient information leaflets. In this interview ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood finds out about Kaufman's ...

Chad Hammerstrom, Net-Rx CEO, started out in pharmacy working as a box boy for Hi-School Pharmacy in Vancouver Wash. Hammerstrom, who grew up on the systems side of the business, reports originally being more IT focused.  Hammerstrom has built Net-Rx into a company with a broad portfolio designed to provide pharmacies with operational support in areas such as pricing and claims reconciliation. ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood caught up with Hammerstrom recently to find out ...

Michael Busch has been involved in pharmacy for a long time. For starters, he has a pharmacy degree himself. Then he was the founder of Medicine Shoppe International, which he sold to Cardinal Health in 1995. Next he developed software to monitor third-party prescription reimbursements for independent and small chain pharmacies, a business that he also sold to Cardinal Health - this time in 2005 - and that is now operated under the Profit Leader name.  Not surprisingly, retirement doesn't suit ...

HCC, a long-standing competitor in the pharmacy management software arena, and FDS, a company that's built a presence in the relatively young field of pharmacy data management services, were both recently acquired by Lagniappe Health, a Calvert Street Capital Partners company.  In this interview, ComputerTalk Senior Editor Will Lockwood ...

We checked in with Retail Management Solutions' (RMS) Chris Gage, who is about six months into her two-year road trip across America visiting RMS' independent pharmacy customers. She shares some of the opportunities she's uncovered for how technology vendors can better support independent pharmacy and a few thoughts on what she's found sets these pharmacists apart. You can follow Chris's travels by visiting www.rms-ontheroad.com

Pharmacist Tom Kelly has seen firsthand the difficulty that chronic pain-patients can have earning the trust of pharmacists and physicians. The serious problem of abuse that hangs over the medications required by patients with legitimate needs puts all parties in a very difficult situation. In this interview with ComputerTalk Senior Editor Will Lockwood, Kelly describes his new solution to this persistent problem.

McKesson's Brian Bertha and Darren O'Neill, head and senior director of sponsored clinical services respectively, have a mission. They not only want to increase the number of clinical interactions pharmacists have with patients, but also make them fit easily into pharmacy workflow while providing the pharmacy with revenue. Bertha and O'Neill took time during McKesson's 2011 ideaShare to talk with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood about how McKesson is making all this possible.

Chuck Wilson, VP of operations for Health Mart, grew up in a family that owned an independent pharmacy. He eventually got a pharmacy degree from the University of Iowa and then gained experience working in operations for several of the big chains, including a 13 year stint at Target during which time the pharmacy business grew from 114 to 1,400 locations and he studied the ins and outs of branding and running retail establishments.  During McKesson's 2011 ideaShare, Wilson talked with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood about ...

Lonny Wilson has quite a bit of experience working with third-party payers and claims data on behalf of independent pharmacy. Wilson is both a retail pharmacy owner and a practitioner of pharmacy and CEO of PPOk and Rx Linc. In this interview with ComputerTalk Senior Editor Will Lockwood, Wilson talks about the current challenges pharmacies face negotiating contracts and preventing and responding to audits, and the opportunities available in better managing pharmacy ...

For the past 30 years, DataScan Pharmacy's founder and president, Alex Minassian, has watched the technology that pharmacists use change along with the business model. Today, the self-taught programmer is scaling back his involvement and handing off the day-to-day operations to his son Kevin, now VP of the Holbrook, N.Y., company. Alex and Kevin agree: The pressures on pharmacists has changed so much that a pharmacist today has to be as much an innovative business thinker as a ...

Tammy Devine, M.B.A., brings an in depth knowledge of pharmacy software and automation to her new role as president of QS/1. Over the course of almost 30 years with the company Devine has applied her background in computer science to finding technology solutions that support the clinical practice and the business of pharmacy. She's learned the business and the market by having several different roles at QS/1. Devine spoke with ComputerTalk

Jae Chung, M.B.A., of Sensor Synergy has a background as an industrial engineer designing workflows in high volume manufacturing environments. For the past 10 years he has focused on pharmacy ­- visiting over 500 pharmacies. He brings an emphasis on assessment of workflow, design, and automation, as well as business strategy development. Jae has recently completed a study of the impact of packaging type and dispensing cycle on long-term care (LTC) pharmacy costs and spoke with ...

The market for robotics and dispensing automation has developed rapidly in recent years. Pharmacies are looking at the technology in a different light and the technology has matured a great deal since it first appeared. In this interview, Tom Rhoads, who has been with Parata Systems for seven years, and is now the company's CEO, offers his perspective on the changes in this technology and the different dispensing models it can support. He also talks about ...

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While in Seattle for the 2011 American Pharmacists Association Annual Meeting, I had the privilege of visiting Beverly Schaefer, R.Ph., at her Katterman's Sand Point Pharmacy. Also along was Stacey Swartz, Pharm.D., co-owner of Neighborhood Pharmacy of Del Ray in Alexandria, Va., which opened in 2009.  Schaefer is well-known among her colleagues both for her dedication to building an innovative pharmacy practice and for her skill at making Katterman's an enjoyable and unique ...

 Cloud computing is popular topic these days, with companies announcing new offerings "in the cloud" on a regular basis.  Even if you already use cloud-based services, and there are many out there, it's worth not only trying to understand better just what it is this concept means, but what the impact can be for pharmacy.  To find out more about the cloud, we checked in with Mark Carvajal, the founder of a new outfit ...

We received the following question from a reader about e-prescribing: 

"What I have noticed about e-prescriptions coming into our pharmacy from our very own clinics (and a host of others in the community) is that all of the electronic data is nothing more than a text string. Oh, it's in a certain format of patient name, physician, etc., in terms of order. And this way every pharmacy system vendor can take the parsed data and 'throw' it up on the screen and make some educated matches to the pharmacy databases. Here'...

Innovation's Executive VP Doyle Jensen talks with ComputerTalk's Maggie Lockwood about the role automation plays in the renewed push to implement central fill to solve the reality of decreasing reimbursement rates and fixed costs.

Two Point Conversions is celebrating 20 years of providing data conversion and archiving services to pharmacies.  In this interview company founder Phil Lisitza talks with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood about how he got started, what data conversion has meant to pharmacists looking to deploy the best technology ­- including his father, and the changes he's seen in technology over the years.

The recent article "The Practice Management System Dilemma," by Bill G. Felkey, M.S., and Brent I. Fox, Pharm.D., Ph.D., ComputerTalk, March/April 2010, addresses the need for vendors of PMS systems to prioritize the development of new products that are desperately needed by pharmacies in order to keep their doors open. The article asks some ...

My name is Bryan Samuels and I am the technology director for a company called Modern Health. We are a privately held, specialty pharmacy company located in Southern California. Our company owns and operates six different specialty pharmacies each catering to its own specific demographic and/or disease state. Collectively, we dispense over 1.5 million prescriptions a year.

In this interview ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood talks with Tom Greenhaw, CEO of Cashier ...

A recent conversation with Bob Moser, R.Ph., supervisor of pharmacy clinical systems for Winston Salem Healthcare Pharmacy, brought up the topic of checklists and their potential to improve pharmacy operations. The topic came to Moser's attention from several sources, including reading airline captain Chesley Sullenberger's book "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters." In this interview, ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood talks with Moser to find out more about ...

Pharmacist and owner Jimmy Yuen recently installed dispensing automation at his Advance Medical Pharmacy in Walnut Creek, Calif. In this audio slide show, he talks about the decision process that led him to select Kirby Lester’s new KL60 and his decision to to invite his independent colleagues for a first-hand look at this technology.

by Brad Ordener

With each passing year healthcare and other industries are becoming more and more reliant on technology. Pharmacy is one industry that is particularly dependent on new innovations to keep up with increasing demand. As this reliance on technology increases some unique problems are emerging that are slowing progress and making it difficult for pharmacy owners to change pharmacy systems. The technological landscape in pharmacy could be improved significantly with ...

In this podcast, McKesson Pharmacy Systems President Stanton McComb covers a range of topics surrounding pharmacy, technology, and the current drive for healthcare reform. He offers his take on what new roles pharmacy may play as a result, the growing role of clinical care in pharmacy, and what’s on the horizon for technology for the pharmacy and for the patient. Also part of the discussion: What MTM means for retail pharmacy right now and what it ...

For the last twelve months, many independent pharmacies have struggled over the decision of whether to register their pharmacy under the 90% Rule, or invest in an IIAS certified point-of-sale.  For one reason or another, many pharmacies opted for the 90% Rule.  It seemed like a logical choice.  No expensive point-of-sale, no major changes, just a little complicated paperwork and it is back to business as usual.  For some, this has worked out.  For others, FSA card declines have ...

Pharmacies already have OTC items in their stores, and with a little planning and proper placement, those standard items can turn into added sales at the POS.

This letter from Integra CEO Kevin Welch is in response to the article written by Kapali Eswaran in the September/October 2009 issue of ComputerTalk regarding "What to Look for in a Paperless System."

An Interview with the Connecticut State Medical Society-IPA Executive Director, Ken Lalime.

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Sponsored by Emdeon

In this interview, eRx Network's VP of Clinical Services, Rick Sage, talks to ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood about where he sees ePrescribing right now and the role companies like eRx play as adoption increases.

&...

An Interview with Valu-Med Pharmacy’s Justin Wilson

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Sponsored by Emdeon

The mobile technology initiative in Butler University's College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences started four years ago with the introduction of laptops for all pharmacy students. A year later laptops were replaced with tablet PCs, which allow students to draw structures, write equations, and ...

Long-time independent pharmacist Bob Graul has made some big changes and taken a new direction recently. In this interview with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood, Graul talks about the process of selling his pharmacies and how this motivated him to get involved in his current project: www.RxOwnership.com, a Web site designed to facilitate independent pharmacy ownership transition.

Duane Chudy, president of TCG, has a long history in pharmacy automation. Beginning with a career at Baxter nearly 25 years ago, Duane pioneered the launch of automated tablet packaging and has since designed and implemented revolutionary new products for a number of pharmacy markets. In this interview with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood, he offers his insight into how his newest technology venture is bringing an new ...

In this interview with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood, HCC VP of Sales Larry Stephenson discusses some of the choices software vendors face when choosing development tools and how these choices influence the end product, from what the user sees to what's under the hood.

QS/1 user Richard Stryker, of Bayshore Pharmacy in Atlantic Highlands, N.J., anticipates that his IIAS-compliant POS system is going to help his customers help others. Here's how he tells this story.

You're probably aware that as of January 1, 2009 there will be new rules for pharmacies processing payments for items eligible for FSA/HRA spending.  If you have a point-of-sale (POS) system, you'll need to make sure it is IIAS compliant and that your system has been certified. If you don't have POS, then you may be looking for another solution.  In this interview, Retail Management Solutions President Brad Jones and KeyCentrix ...

Managing a pharmacy's front-end can be a time-consuming and complex task. But there are ways to make life easier. In this interview with ComputerTalk's Maggie Lockwood, ECRS President Peter Catoe talks about how the company's Supplier Gateway can connect its Catapult point-of-sale (POS) system with supplier ordering systems to reduce the time spent on ordering, pricing, and other activities.

By Dave Williams

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, many pharmacies are looking to cultivate greater customer affinity with a branded loyalty program. One misconception among many retailers is that these programs have to be complicated. Nothing could be further from the truth. By simply instituting a loyalty program where customers perceive some added value, store visit frequency and average basket size should increase by at least 1% to 2%. Such a sales increase ...

In this interview with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood, DAA VP for business development Abrar Kazmi talks about the company's new OnClickTech Support offering, which offers remote PC support. This is a joint venture with Team 9 Global Serivces, and is something a little different for ...

McKesson Pharmacy Systems' (MPS) president Stanton McComb took time during the most recent McKesson Trade Show in Las Vegas to answer a series of questions from ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood about what the centrally-hosted EnterpriseRx pharmacy management product, already deployed in the chain setting, offers for independent pharmacy.

Pharmacist Doug Kaleugher opened Med-Fast Pharmacy 1990. Since then the business has expanded to 22 pharmacies in western Pennsylvania, with a mix of standard prescription services, retail, long-term care, and compounding. In this interview with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood, Kaleugher talks about the big role dispensing automation has played Med-Fast's growth. He also offers strategies for introducing automation into your pharmacy and his take on the benefits of some of the newest dispensing technology out there.

Dave Burke R.Ph, M.B.A., pictured at left in blue, owner of Dave’s Pharmacy in Marysville, Ohio, took some time out at the recent Cardinal RBC to talk with ComputerTalk's Will Lockwood about his decision to a install a workflow management system and the benefits he has seen. Dave’s Pharmacy fills an average of 400 prescriptions per day, with peaks on some ...

Joe Ross, director of business services at McKesson Pharmacy Systems, talks in this interview with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood about existing and anticipated regulations that are changing what drug sales pharmacists are required to log. State and Federal regulations that require tracking the sale of non-prescription methamphetamine precursors have contributed to a demonstrable reduction in the illegal use of these drugs. More regulation may be in store, since the FDA is currently considering a behind-the-counter class of ...

Here is an overview of the big questions about e-prescribing that pharmacists were asking Speed Script’s Heath Reynolds during the 109th NCPA meeting in October. Reynolds, director of business development, talks here of the nuts and bolts of taking e-prescribing from theory to practice.

Pharmacies serving the long-term care market are likely to have special workflow requirements. Read on for vendors' views on the key elements to maximize LTC safety and efficiency.

Workflow technology is constantly evolving. Here are some details on the latest enhancements that vendors have added to their offerings.

ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood caught up recently with Marc Cohen, senior director of marketing for RelayHealth, to talk about what's happening in the world of claims processing and switching services. It turns out that there are some interesting new additions being made that build on the transactional expertise and connectivity that are the core elements of these services.

In this interview with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood, PharmacistsOnLine CEO David Knaggs offers his views on how independent pharmacists can improve their competitiveness by turning their attention to tested marketing tools and to product lines that have not traditionally been a big part their business.

McKesson Pharmacy Systems (MPS) President Stanton McComb sat down with ComputerTalk senior editor Will Lockwood at the McKesson Pharmacy Strategies Conference and Trade Show in Boston in July to talk about recent changes at MPS resulting from the Per-Se Technologies acquisition, the newest technology that MPS is offering, and the changes he sees ahead for retail pharmacy practice.

In this interview with ComputerTalk's Maggie Lockwood, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacist’s Carla Sexton, R.Ph., CGP, assistant director, policy and advocacy, along with consultant and ASCP board member Shelly Spiro, R.Ph., FASCP, talk about the ways evolving technologies, from web-based interfaces to the LTC e-prescribing pilot, are impacting the consultant pharmacist.

Parata brought its RDS robotics directly to ComputerTalk recently, courtesy of its new mobile unit. The concept was developed over the past year as a way to reach out to busy community pharmacists.

In this interview with ComputerTalk's senior editor, Will Lockwood, Parata's executive VP of sales and marketing, Tom Rhoads, pictured at left, discusses the results and lessons of two recent surveys on dispensing automation that covered independent, chain, and institutional pharmacies. Read on for his take on the trends revealed, pharmacists' attitude toward their industry and their future, and the tools that can help make sure that investment in automation pays dividends.