Listen to this episode of Pharmacy View Podcast where host Scott Carpenter, EVBC sits with Pharmacist Mark Feldschuh to learn more about Mark’s journey in the Pharmaceutical industry.
Having owned a Pharmacy for over three decades, Mark is passionate about the industry. Over the course of time, Mark learned from a whole lot from people: from attending conferences to hearing people talk about new ideas—learning was everywhere. As advocacy and professional development have also always been areas of interest, Mark worked towards bringing betterment in those regards and really wanted to give back in the same way. Mark now helps business owners develop their own pharmacies.
Mark emphasizes the need for the following in any Pharmacy:
- Systems
A key requisite that Mark champions is the need for using systems. He says that once systemization is in place, it becomes easier to manage Pharmacies.
- Patient’s Interest
Another key element is to ensure that the Pharmacy is serving the patient’s best interests.
Talking about script book and the painstaking task of having to file patient records, Mark underlines that technology has come a long way since then. He sees a lot of positive change in the future and doesn’t shy away from crediting machine learning and artificial intelligence for the same. And when asked about which app a business needs to choose from a plethora of apps available in the market, he’s quick to point to the following:
- Ensure that the app is patient focused
- Check for the app’s ability to integrate with other systems
- Ask who owns the data and who is monetizing from it
- Ensure there are systems to mitigate risks
As Pharmacies exist to serve communities, Mark underpins, every app that’s put into consideration, should, first and foremost, be easy for the customer to use. He adds that having control over the data is of prime importance to any Pharmacy and that along with other common problems can be solved only when the Pharmacy has a Risk Mitigation System in place.
Topics Covered
- Advocacy and Professional Development
- Importance of Building Systems
- Understanding Use of Data
- Risk Mitigation
Key Quotes (Time Stamps)
- “Back to sort of how I hope I help people. I used to go on a lot of conferences, see a lot of new ideas and obviously learnt from other people. And you certainly should be giving back to the same people, which is easy to do.” (4:05 – 4:20)
- “I really enjoyed advocacy and as I said Professional Development (PD).” (5:21 – 5:25)
- “And one of our big things was the idea of using systems. I got that from a book called The E Myth, as an entrepreneur, by Michael Gerber—very old now but the systems approach was brilliant. So, I was always trying to steal any ideas on systemization from anyone.” (5:33 – 5:56)
- “One of the ones which is really-really simple was: walk as the customer walks into the pharmacy.” (6:11 – 6:20)
- “In Pharmacy, I always thought you do something in the patient’s best interest as long as it’s totally legal. If you did that, it’d be hard to get in trouble.” (8:29 – 8:39)
- “For some of the apps that I have seen, the Pharmacist doesn’t own the data at all. So, I suggest that’s a problematic model.” (21:52 – 22:00)
- “Not having control over your data, for instance, is such an obvious problem. It’s very hard to defend if you don’t have a good risk mitigation strategy. If you don’t have any control over your data and you don’t know who has then you’re just looking for trouble.” (23:31 – 23:50)
Social Media Clips (Time Stamps)
- Importance of New Ideas (3:30 – 4:20)
- Professional Development (4:47 – 5:25)
- Need for Systems (5:33 – 6:10)
- Simple Changes in Pharmacies (6:11 – 7:20)
- Importance of Risk Mitigation Strategies (23:04 – 23:50)
Useful Links
Scott Carpenter, EVBC | LinkedIn
Shopfront Solutions: Overview | LinkedIn
Aerion Technologies: Overview | LinkedIn
Aerion Technologies | Helping Non Techs Build Better Tech
