Custom Medication Flavoring:
Valuable Opportunities to Improve Customer Satisfaction, Store Loyalty, Patient Compliance and Pharmacy Revenues
Albert I. Wertheimer and James M. WilsonSUMMARY
A two part study explored the role of community pharmacy custom medication flavoring services. It reported on customer attitudes, preferences and opinions, willingness to pay, and the impact on pharmacy revenues. Awareness of such a service was found to be very low, yet demand was found to be high. It was also discovered that an overwhelming proportion of customers would patronize a pharmacy that consistently offered custom flavoring services, and they would highly recommend such a pharmacy to friends and neighbors. It is estimated that an individual store could gain 16-24 new customers per year and generate roughly $51,000 to $78,000 in new business by consistently promoting a custom-flavoring service. Therefore, it appears that custom flavoring is an untapped source for generating market share, revenue increases, and customer loyalty.
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The use of Pillglide® in Children: A pilot study
Mamta Jagani1, Hélène Legay1,2, Sejal Ranmal2, Kuan Ooi1, Catherine Tuleu2
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust; 2UCL School of Pharmacy, London, UK
As paediatric pharmacists, we are constantly faced with the challenges of supporting parents in managing children who are struggling to take their medicines. This is not helped by the reality that the majority of medicines (>70%) are available as either tablet or capsule which are unsuitable for children to swallow. And for the small proportion of medicines available as liquid there is the additional issue with their palatability. Pillglide® came to our attention when it was made available in theUK in 2009 as a licensed medical device for adults with swallowing difficulties.The aim of the study is to investigate if Pillglide® would benefit tchildren aged 3 years and older to comply with their medicines(tablet, capsule or liquid preparations) compared to standard behavioural approach alone.
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Improving the taste of medication to help children be more compliant
Stuart R Amos, Chad Baker, Yaye Gueye, FLAVORx, Columbia MD
ABSTRACT: The objective was to determine which pediatric liquid medications are commonly flavored and re-flavored in the U.S. pharmacy setting and which flavors are preferred by consumers. We also evaluated the use of the FLAVORx system to see if it increases compliance . When flavoring was used, non-compliance was reduced from 76% to 20%. Our approach was a practical examination of commonly flavored pediatric liquid medications and most popular flavor choices. The top most commonly re-flavored medications are Augmentin, Amoxicillin, Azithromycin, Cefdinir and Clindamycin. The top most used flavors are grape, bubblegum, strawberry, watermelon and cherry. The stability of each medication was tested in the presence of flavoring using HPLC. It was shown that the stability of all medications were unaffected by the presence of flavoring.
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