A Complete Guide to Pharmacy Management System Development

Why is Pharmacy Management Software Important?

The growing need for systematized medical practices worldwide has increased the demand for effective pharmacy management system development in healthcare. No doubt, pharmacy management requires balancing various processes simultaneously. Right from accurately dispensing medication to maintaining adherence to regulatory compliance while ensuring customer satisfaction, there is a lot in their bucket. Pharmacy management software solutions offer a lot to boost the process.

Pharmaceutical management systems automate and streamline the pharmacy’s workflow. By using the drug management system, pharmacists can efficiently review physician orders, prepare drug orders and medications, and effectively manage inventory. It further helps handle medical billing solutions and insurance and recognizes incompatibilities to achieve better patient outcomes. Pharmacy management system development can also provide insights into business performance and encourage pharmacists to focus on their core business.

What are the Challenges Faced by Pharmacy Management?

Every pharmacy faces unique challenges. Some may lack a proper drug management system and face drug overstock or understock issues, while others may have staff shortages for pharmacy document management. 

No doubt, pharmacy inventory management is a challenging task. Keeping a check on the accuracy of pharmacy accounting, dispensing drugs, reviewing drug orders, etc., requires maintaining proper pharmacy workflow management. If you are opting for a manual approach to managing your drugstore, then you may face the following challenges:

1. Inventory Management

Inability to update inventory in real-time, keep track of a wide range of pharmaceutical products with varying expiry dates, and ensure stock availability. Checking whether the available medications are not expired and sufficiently available to fulfill the customers’ demands is vital. Failing to do so is not affordable for pharmacies as it may lead to potential health risks and dissatisfied customers.

With a pharmacy stock management system, you can overcome such challenges. The pharmacy software systems can help monitor stock levels, set alerts for low stock, and even manage expiry dates. The pharmacy practice management systems can have customized features as per the pharmacy requirements, ensuring timely stock ordering, preventing stockout, and minimizing the risk of having expired medicines on the shelves.

2. Supplier Management

Drugstore owners usually deal with multiple suppliers, including pharmaceutical wholesalers. Collaborating and coordinating with these suppliers becomes a necessity. Further, ensuring a continuous supply of medical products and medications while making the best bulk-price deal can become a daunting task. Any misconception can lead to supply chain disruptions, inefficient pricing, and increased costs.

To overcome this challenge, consider opting for pharmacy inventory software. It can help track payments, maintain comprehensive supplier records, and manage purchase orders. This pharmacy management platform can streamline supplier interaction, help in better price negotiation, and enhance purchasing decisions.

3. Supply Chain Disruptions

Supply chain disruptions in the medical field are again a matter of concern. Imagine a situation where your pharmacy faces a sudden shortage of essential medicines. This will surely affect pharmacy workflow management, operations, and reputation. These demands a proactive approach.

With pharmacy management system development, you can prevent such supply chain disruptions. You can customize the features of pharmacy system software to enhance visibility, streamline processes, and ensure regulatory compliance. It can provide detailed reports to determine the better-performing vendors and wholesalers and help understand several factors that can affect the ordering process. It can further prepare pharmacies to deal better during the flu season, maintain a robust supply chain, ensuring your pharmacy remains well-stocked.

4. Billing and Insurance Claims

The pharmacy’s billing and insurance claims processing demands meticulous attention to detail. This includes processing insurance claims for prescribed medications and ensuring accurate reimbursement. Any minute errors in this process can result in financial losses and customer dissatisfaction.

Pharmacy management system development can automate various aspects of billing processes like claim creation, submission, invoicing, and tracking. It can streamline the revenue cycle management process and reduce errors. The pharmacy accounting software can promptly identify and rectify issues, optimize billing and claims processing, and improve your pharmacy’s financial health.

5. Managing Competition

The pharmacy industry is fiercely competitive. Chain pharmacies and online pharmacies compete for market share. Hence, to stay in the competition, pharmacies are required to implement a robust technological solution that can boost the pharmacy management process and help them differentiate from other pharmacies.

Including pharmacy management software solutions can give you the cutting edge to stand out from the crowd. You can design personalized pharma inventory management software with customized features after a proper competition or market analysis.

Benefits of a Pharmacy Management System

1. HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA regulations stipulate strict rules for handling patient data by medical professionals. Using a digital platform for pharmacy management makes it easier for staff to ensure the privacy of health data and its appropriate usage. 

2. Improved Efficiency

Pharmacists must do many things and ensure that medicines aren’t past their expiration date. Furthermore, the staff must also manage the pharmacy’s finances. A single, consolidated pharmacy inventory management system empowers pharmacists to manage daily workflows with a few clicks while minimizing errors. 

3. Reduction in Medicine Malpractice

Pharmacists often sell highly exclusive medication that might be harmful if consumed without physicians’ explicit instructions. These include medication for mental illness, steroids, and pills with opioids. The pharmacy management software systems help the staff dispense the right amount of medication to the right person and eliminate any opportunity to misuse drugs. 

4. Improved Patient Outcomes

Patients often seek guidance from pharmacists about drug adherence and discuss their conditions. Pharmacy management system solutions that can integrate with electronic health records allow pharmacists to counsel patients and resolve any queries. Healthcare cloud computing has even enabled mhealth applications for pharmacy management. These allow people to connect with their pharmacists using smartphones and clarify any doubts about drug usage while pharmacists make valuable recommendations. As a result, people suffering from chronic conditions go on to enjoy better outcomes in the long run.

Important Features of a Pharmacy Management Software

Several vendors that develop custom hospital management system solutions also offer pharmacy management system solutions. In light of numerous options, it might become difficult to choose the right one for your pharmacy. But there are a few common, indispensable features that every pharmacy management system development ought to have –

1. Inventory Management

Pharmacies deal with a large variety of inventory that must be carefully monitored and dispensed. These include filling out orders to manufacturers, updating stocks, checking for expiration, ensuring that over-the-counter medication is always available, and so forth. Many of these are repetitive, and pharmacy inventory software with healthcare automation solutions would reduce the burden on staff, not to mention minimize the possibility of errors.

2. Prescription Management

This is one of the essential features of any pharmacy management solution. It enables doctors to update prescriptions and refills directly, easing pharmacy inventory management system workflow. This is possible because of seamless electronic data exchange between the physician’s end and the pharmacist’s end of the platform. Furthermore, functional healthcare interoperability allows pharmacies to pull up health records and verify doctor recommendations, thereby reducing the risk of errors.

3. Reporting

Reporting and healthcare analytics solutions within pharmacy management systems assess the daily business data. The amount of each drug sold, the people sold to, cost-to-expenditure ratios, and so forth reveal insights on the business side of things. Efficient clinical data analytics also helps to minimize over-stocking or wastage and optimizes operational overhead.

4. Electronic Prescription

Everyone’s aware of the illegible handwriting that most physicians have. Unsurprisingly, this increases the chances of errors. Moreover, it might also slow down pharmacy workflows as the staff may have trouble understanding a handwritten prescription. Electronic prescriptions become extremely helpful for pharmacies in densely populated urban locations that deal with many customers.

5. Analytics

Assessing patterns of drug usage could help doctors and policymakers take an informed approach to population health management. In addition to analyzing the business side, clinical informatics solutions for integrated pharmacy management platforms also assess comprehensive data about every patient who buys medication, operational workflows, and purchase patterns of various kinds of drugs. Such analytics further help pharmaceutical research and improve healthcare provider solutions.  

6. HIPAA and Regulatory Compliance

Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, DEA, FDA, and state pharmacy regulations is another important feature to include in the pharmacy management platform. The hospital pharmacy management software must align with legal requirements in the field. Moreover, HIPAA compliant software development will efficiently safeguard sensitive patient information and prevent any potential penalties.

Steps to Build a Pharmacy Management System

Let’s look at the sequence of steps to develop pharmacy management software –  

1. Identify Your Goals

This is one of the first steps in developing software for any application. Knowing what exactly you need it for helps pharmacy software developers add relevant functionality. The same holds good for a pharmacy inventory system. The goals of pharmacies might differ based on geography or other parameters, and a pharmacy at an urban location might have different needs from one at a rural one. Parameters like the number of customers served and the kind of medications sold frequently help prevent shortages or excessive stocks. 

2. Finalize Architecture

The design of pharmacy software programs must reflect the workflows of a pharmacy. A particular pharmacy might need to have a function for medical records management to access health data and assist patients. Moreover, an architecture modeled after integrated healthcare systems would also help pharmacists serve their customers better regarding refills, and alternatives and even counsel patients about drug usage.  

3. Migrate Data

Pharmacy operating systems need data to function after the architecture is finalized. Migration of a pharmacy’s business data to the desired platform would help the development team incorporate administrative workflows and add relevant features. 

4. Integrate with a CRM Platform

Integrating with a customer relationship management platform helps pharma inventory management software interact with customers better, and it goes a long way in establishing effective patient engagement systems. CRM functionality helps pharmacists know their customers better and make informed decisions about their workflows. Moreover, it also provides an overview of patients’ health needs and allows the staff to serve customers better. 

5. Deploy and Test

This is the last step in pharmacy management system development. After the requirements have been finalized and operational data migrated, the development team builds the platform and tests it to check for bugs. The final product must meet client requirements and ensure seamless functionality. Furthermore, the pharmacy software systems company must offer periodic support and updates for smooth operations.

What Problems Can Pharmacy Management Software Solve?

The FDA receives over 100,000 reports every year. Statistics suggest that 21% of them are the result of dispensing errors at the pharmacy. Pharmacy information systems can undoubtedly efficiently resolve such issues. This software solution offers numerous benefits and can solve various problems in the pharmaceutical sector. Let’s discuss them below.

1. Insufficient Drug Information

Pharmacy information systems can offer better drug documentation. It includes a detailed composition of the ingredients used in the medicine and their substitute. It helps providers avoid any allergic reactions to the patients and the need to send patients off because they do not have the same drug.

2. Manual Drug Dispensation

Manual drug dispensation is a tedious task. Medical staff is required to decipher the provider’s written prescriptions, verify them, check for the medicine availability, find the drug, etc. However, this tedious process can be automated with pharmacy management software systems. The software can efficiently manage drug dispensation. A request from the doctor’s computer can be sent to the pharmacy CRM system, and technology will process the rest. It boosts the process, allowing pharmacists to engage better and assist the patients.

3. Expired or Absent Medications

Without technology, it will be quite difficult to manage the pharmacy inventory. Many times, it happens that pharmacists get to know about the expired or absent medications at the moment of selling the drug or during review (which does not happen often). Getting into such a situation can seriously harm your business in the long run. It is important to resolve your inventory issues. Pharmacy management system development can help in better understanding the number of patients you serve and accordingly suggest for drug reordering, expired or absent medications.

4. Off-Key Recommendations

Pharmacists often get in a situation where the patients ask for help in choosing a drug. Later you need to ask numerous questions about their previous medical history, and patients fail to answer them properly. But, with the pharmaceutical management system, one can simply access the visitor’s EHR and provide more accurate and safer recommendations.

5. Medication Mistakes

In the US, around 6,800 prescription medications and countless over-the-counter drugs are available. Considering the numbers, it is quite obvious to make mistakes during drug prescriptions or dispensation. And belonging to the pharmaceutical industry, you are not allowed to make even a minor mistake as it can cost you someone’s life or a penalty. It is better to avoid getting into any such situation. The software pharmacy management system is there to save the day with its 24/7 availability.

What Are Common Pharmacy Management System Modules?

Ever wondered how pharmacy software development can be made a lucrative solution? The answer is to include every aspect that can help manage a pharmacy. It is more like an all-in-one solution.

Here are a few modules that you would like to include in a pharmacy operation software:

1. Document and Data Management

A pharmacy has many documents that need to be managed efficiently. These documents can include patient data, prescriptions, medication orders, and more. Software for pharmacy document management can help keep small notes and store the documents in well-organized virtual folders. It makes the search easy, as you need to just type the keywords and get the information.

2. User Management

Medical store management software must include a user management feature. This feature allows access to only authorized users. It has role-specific access allowing professionals at different organizational levels to get defined levels of data access. For example, some members can only get inventory and medical data-related information while others (preferably higher management) can view a comprehensive picture like sales reports, analytics, employees’ performance, etc.

3. Integrations and Interoperability

In today’s era, medical store management software is impossible to imagine without integration and healthcare interoperability features. Pharmacy dispensing software must integrate with point of sale, e-prescriptions, and EHR/EMR systems, allowing different healthcare systems and components to work together. On the other hand, interoperability allows seamless communication and electronic data interchange between different systems, devices, or software. Having these features will prevent manual data entry errors and automate the process.

Other modules can be multi-store and multi-location support, eCommerce, etc.

Tech Stack for Pharmacy Management Software

The price of pharmacy management software services is greatly influenced by the technology stack that is used. The associated pharmacy software developer and other experts are well-versed in various app and web development technologies. Their knowledge can help you get one of the best hospital pharmacy systems after understanding your requirements.

• Front End: Angular, Java, Swift, HTML, etc.
• Back End: Python, Laravel, Node.JS
• Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL
• Push Notifications: SMS and in-app messaging
• Payment Gateway: Braintree, PayPal, Stripe
• Hosting Platform: AWS, Google Cloud
• Analytics: Amazon EMR, Google Analytics
• Social Login: Facebook, Twitter APIs, LinkedIn, etc.

How Much Does a Pharmacy Management System Cost?

The cost of pharmacy management system development depends on various factors like the hired third-party vendors, developer’s experience, features required, software complexity, and developers’ location. In some countries, the resources are easily available at lower prices, while in other countries, the resources are limited, and prices are even higher. For example, US developers may charge $150-$250 an hour, in Europe the rate is $120-$180 an hour, and developers in Asia may charge $40-$80 an hour. 

You might expect:

• The lowest cost is $15,000
• The highest cost is around $30,000

You just need to contact a reliable healthcare software development company, discuss your requirements and budget, and get the best pharmaceutical inventory management system. To develop strong pharmacy operation software, the company must have a team of esteemed project managers, pharmacy software developers, UI/UX designers, and testers.

Market Trends of Pharmacy Management Software

The growth of the pharmaceutical industry was suggested to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 14% in the period of 2020-2027. This estimate was given even before the pre-COVID times.

When talking about the development of pharmacy practice management software, it’s important to consider the latest tech trends and update requirements for these systems. Here’s a discussion of some of the trends below:

1. Mobile Access

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a paradigm shift towards online business operations. The pharmacy sector was among the first businesses to comply with the new reality. This means that pharmacies should invest in web-based portals or pharmacy app development solutions. These provide patients with the options of self-service, online medication orders, and delivery tracking. They also help pharmacy staff members enable remote order verification, access to patient information, medication counseling, and more.

2. Patient Notifications

Patient notifications are another booming trend in the pharmacy sector. They allow the pharmacy’s customers to be well-informed. However, sending notifications doesn’t mean flooding your patient base with bulk emails/messages or feeding their inbox with random marketing offers.

Your pharmacy automation system should be equipped with a well-planned notification feature. It should send helpful messages according to user preferences, such as medication refill reminders, order status and delivery tracking, and other personalized communication that won’t bother your customers, keep them satisfied, and encourage them to return to your pharmacy.

3. Connected Device Systems and Drone Deliveries 

Custom pharmacy management system development should prioritize supporting a variety of device integrations. This can include drone management and medicine delivery tracking systems. For example, during the pandemic period drone companies used drones for delivering coronavirus vaccines to remote areas in the U.S. By allowing a range of device integration can improve the pharmacy inventory management system workflow and offer new avenues for enhancing convenience and efficiency. 

The integration of connected devices can generate vast amounts of data. The hospital pharmacy systems can leverage this data for better analytics, offering insights into inventory optimization, medication usage patterns, and patient behavior.

Conclusion

Electronic pharmacy systems go a long way in improving the overall clinical experience for patients and helping pharmacists optimize operations. They form an indispensable part of the broader integrated care management strategy at larger hospitals. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitization of several aspects of healthcare, including parts of the pharmacy management process. It has helped pharmacists enjoy higher revenues, reduced waiting times for patients, and resulted in a win-win for all stakeholders involved. Pharmacy management system development has cemented its place in the healthcare technology industry.