It’s easy to forget that in the world of medicine and pharmaceuticals, the average small town pharmacy is really what’s supporting the entire industry. If you run an independent pharmacy and you don’t believe it, consider these statistics:

• Over 75% of all medical appointments involve some sort of treatment or therapy with prescription medications.
• At any given time, nearly 50% of all Americans have used at least one prescription medication within the last 30 days.
• In just one year, researchers found that doctors and pharmacies prescribed over 2.6 billion prescription medications to patients after they had visited with a doctor.

Ultimately, consumers and doctors alike are incredibly dependent on their local pharmacies. And pharmacies, in turn, are becoming increasingly dependent on new technologies — specifically modern retail pharmacy POS systems, to be precise. Here’s why:

1. POS systems that have designed specifically for use in pharmacies usually have the ability to track and record the prescriptions of each patient. These software systems can’t exactly predict drug interactions or make recommendations — but they provide the pharmacists with tons of information about a patient’s medical history, and those pharmacists can advise patients in these areas.
   

2. By using an advanced POS system, the pharmacy also has the ability to track sales trends and customer rewards programs — two things that big chain pharmacies can do easily, but which smaller pharmacies tend to struggle with. When a pharmacy can track all of this data, it’s more capable of providing the items that customers want, and it’s able to offer lower prices for loyal customers.
   

3. The convenience of new software goes beyond better rewards programs; new POS systems are able to process all of this data in real time and are able to make transactions incredibly fast. This is definitely a strong selling point for local pharmacies whose customers need to get in and out quickly.
   

4. And of course, since digital security is becoming a bigger issue for retail stores these days, it’s important that a pharmacy has a POS system with bulletproof security features, like encrypted card swiping and protecting data storage, along with a team of software engineers who are available 24/7 to offer support and advice.

So if you’ve been underestimating and ignoring your local pharmacy lately, it’s about time to give it a little more attention! See this reference for more.