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Pharmacy systems engineered to make partnerships with chains easier more efficient
Ask Tom George how McKesson Pharmacy Systems programs, such as OmniLink and InfoLink, benefit retail customers and the president of MPS is likely to reply in terms of connectivity and leverage.
"Our business strategy is to provide easy connections and enable customers to do business with us, and not be intrusive to their current systems," George said. "We want our technology to be a byproduct of the processes they already do, instead of being incremental."
McKesson's OmniLink pharmacy system is a good example. This information program intercepts electronic script payment transactions as they're transmitted to third parties, checks them for accuracy and results in improved pharmacy profitability thanks to the error correction.
"The pharmacy's main business is the relationship with its consumer-filling the prescription. We've created the OmniLink product to fit between the process of filling the prescription and the electronic dialogue with the third party processor," George said, explaining OmniLink's strategy.
To execute this kind of approach, George has two functions and two titles. He is president of McKesson Pharmacy Systems, the subsidiary that develops the management systems McKesson markets to its customers. Those management systems include:
Pharmaserv for Windows (a complete pharmacy management and dispensing system).
ProfitLink (a system to assist in managing competitive pharmacy pricing).
EconoLink (an order-entry and inventory management system for independents, institutions and small chains).
McKesson's point-of-sale system for the Windows NT client/server environment to complement McKesson's pharmacy management technology to Pharmaserv For Windows.
These technology service offerings are designed to help retail pharmacies enhance their margins, reduce their working capital and manage their businesses more effectively.
George, who reports to corporate vice president and chief information officer Carmine Villani, is also executive vice president of customer technology for McKesson's Information Technologies Group, which is responsible for all advanced information systems, including OmniLink, EconoLink, InfoLink and any new systems the group develops. In other words, George is responsible for- and has final sign-off on-any technology that touches a customer.
As McKesson creates new technology solutions to help pharmaceutical customers work more efficiently and be more profitable, the wholesaler's strategy is to embed them in existing pharmacy processes. For example, the OmniLink centralized pharmacy connectivity system is...