The NACDS Total Store Expo is only a few days away and we are gearing up to show our customers the exciting new things that are happening at FLAVORx and Fillmaster. During the show we will be sharing new insights, strategies, and best practices to help your pharmacies get the most value out of your flavoring program through customer engagement and automating the ask.

It is back to school time and that means the beginning of cold and flu season for a lot of children. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the United States, seasonal cold and flu activity most commonly peaks between December and February, but flu viruses can cause illness from early October to late May.

Viruses like the cold or flu can spread from person to person through coughs and sneezes of infected people or surfaces, making back to school time a more likely time for children to get sick. If a child does get sick, it is very important that they take the prescription as prescribed and adhere to the medication to prevent antibiotic resistance, and to get them back to school and get their parents back to work as quickly as possible. 

New app for iPhone aims to improve adherence to pediatric medications and simplify the road to wellness by giving parents and children the ability to choose the taste of their liquid medicine digitally. Doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and pharmacy technicians can also use the app to better engage with their patients and improve outcomes.

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Judging a Pill by Its Color.” It addressed the fact that consumers make a lot of assumptions about medication simply based on the color of the tablet or capsule. That got me thinking about all the colors we have come to take for granted in the world of pharmacy and medicine. What if the color, size or shape of the pill altered a customers medicine adherence? Color is all around us and I think we make many assumptions about the significance of what certain colors mean or imply when we see them.

There is an old saying, “You don’t get a 2^nd chance to make a 1^st impression”. Sure it’s cliché, but oftentimes the first impression a potential new customer of an independent pharmacy (or any locally owned business) is the signage above the front door. I’ve collected countless numbers of business cards at tradeshows where an independent pharmacy uses their store name alongside an old image of a classic mortar & pestle. While we all know this symbolizes the very root of pharmacy and quickly identifies with the public as a place to pick up prescriptions, your image could be perceived as a bit outdated with today’s customers, especially the Millennial generation.