Low-Code Tools and Automation Power Minor Ailments Program for Pharmacists
November 3, 2023
Blanc Labs teamed up with Daylight Automation (acquired by Quadient) to enable the Minor Ailments service at a major Canadian pharmacy. The team designed and deployed digital forms, automated workflows, and integrated with enterprise systems to power how pharmacists assess and treat 15 minor ailments at pharmacies across the country. This comes at a critical inflection point for Canadians needing efficient access to healthcare services.
The client knew having pharmacists fill out a paper-form for each patient would not scale across their network and would create massive headaches for data integration, workflow management, payments & billing, and information security.
With Blanc Labs support, the Pharmacy rolled out a digital workflow solution that offers patients and pharmacists a much improved experience that eliminates extra steps, ensuring accurate and timely assessments, and treatment of minor ailments.
After 6-months of Minor Ailments Service in Ontario
244,630
Assessments Completed
250,150
Prescriptions for Minor Ailments
Benefits of our Solution Approach
Integrated Solution
The low-code solution offered an integrated approach for patient booking, patient record management, managing the assessment workflow, generating the prescription, and managing the billing process on behalf of pharmacists.
Streamlined Data Collection
Allowing busy pharmacists to spend less time on administration and more time on high-value tasks, ultimately allowing them to serve patients more effectively.
Improved Data Quality & Security
By offering a dedicated tool and workflow for each minor ailment, the solution dramatically reduced the amount of manual effort and the steps required to gather and transcribe patient data at the time of the assessment.
Additionally the solution is securely integrated into the pharmacy information systems, so the data collected conforms to all health data security standards.
Superior Customer and Employee Experience
Patients can now book an appointment ahead of time or walk-in any of the pharmacy locations minimizing the time between the consult and the treatment.
Rather than having each patient fill out paper forms, the tool guides the pharmacist through a Q&A style assessment and patient documentation workflow.
Real-Time Updates
Using a low-code tool allows the workflows to be updated in real-time. This means when any of the requirements of the 15 minor ailment assessment workflows change, the team can quickly update and push out the change.
As additional minor ailments are added, pharmacists will be able to conduct these assessments with minimal training or operational overhead.
Impact
85%
Of All Community Pharmacies are Prescribing for Minor Ailments
8
Provinces Currently Allow Pharmacists to Prescribe for Minor Ailments
$42M +
Savings to Ontario with Pharmacists Treating for 3 Minor Ailments
A Transformative Approach to Primary Care
Given that pharmacists are the most accessible health care professionals, I think minor ailments prescribing will lead to an improved pharmacist-patient relationship and a more fulfilling professional career. As medication experts, pharmacists are trained and equipped with the knowledge to practice beyond classic dispensing activities.
Providing clinical services, which allow pharmacists to use their entire range of training, is the future of pharmacy.
When it comes to minor ailments prescribing, passionate pharmacists will be invaluable and I’m hopeful that a shift will occur where these types of services become the norm1.
– Timothy Brady, Chair of Ontario Pharmacists Association