Expand Health Access for All Through Digitized Pharmacies
Across emerging markets, it is widely believed that pharmacists are the first point of contact for primary health care. Increased health demands have forced pharmacists to adopt a patient-centered approach, particularly in low-income and underserved communities. Despite the important role pharmacists play as community health providers, national public health programs and global health partners in developing markets, struggle to engage private pharmacies at scale. By empowering pharmacists through comprehensive digital capacity building and continuing professional education programs, we strengthen community health care for millions.
Digitized pharmacies can rapidly close this gap but they’ve largely been left out of global and national health programs. SwipeRx explains how fixing this can improve quality of care and close the gap towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Their moonshot proposed to begin scaling up this work in geographies like Southeast Asia, which already have hundreds of thousands of pharmacies that are ready to be better integrated into global and national health programs.
We sat down with SwipeRx to learn more about their initiative, which would accelerate progress towards achieving SDG 3: good health and well-being.
“On average, patients in Southeast Asia visit pharmacies ten times more frequently than they visit a health facility…Our big idea is to leverage technology to improve primary care through pharmacies.”
~ SwipeRx
UA: What inspired your moonshot idea?
SRx: Our big idea is to leverage technology to improve primary care through pharmacies. Utilizing the largest digital network of pharmacy professionals and students in Southeast Asia and linking this network to telemedicine providers, SwipeRx will improve access to primary care for underserved communities, enhance pharmacy capacity and test innovative primary care service delivery modalities.
We will utilize our existing digital community and Belanja networks (SwipeRx B2B eCommerce solution and point-of-sale (POS) together with linkages to telemedicine providers and national insurance and data systems to test the ability of technology-assisted independently owned private pharmacies in peri-urban and rural areas of Indonesia and other markets in Southeast Asia to improve primary care coverage and results.
UA: What Sustainable Development Goals are you championing?
SRx: SDG #3 Good Health and Well Being. In many lower and middle-income countries, pharmacies are the first point of health care, particularly for low income and otherwise underserved community members. On average, patients in Southeast Asia visit pharmacies ten times more frequently than they would visit a health facility. Given the fragmented nature of the pharmacy channel, reaching pharmacies at scale has been both time and cost prohibitive for public and community health initiatives to date. There are few pharmacy professionals that have actually received the training, supplies and other resources required to optimally contribute to primary care. For this reason, national public health programs and global health partners in LMICs have not been able to engage private pharmacies at scale.
UA: What impact do you hope to make?
SRx: We will generate scaled improvements in primary health care practices (among pharmacies linked with telemedicine providers) and client health outcomes. These results will generate increased pharmacy contributions to universal health coverage targets. Our impact measurement will track progress against the following objectives:
Increase early detection and diagnosis with a particular focus on women’s health
Increase community provision of pre-pregnancy, antenatal and contraceptive and other primary care service provision through pharmacies linked to telemedicine providers
Generate cost-efficient results using a new pharmacy business model with potential to facilitate scaled, sustainable pharmacy contributions to primary care
UA: Looking ahead to 2023, what are you most hopeful about?
SRx: People visit pharmacies ten times more frequently than they visit a health facility in Southeast Asia. Using technology, SwipeRx will improve access to quality primary care services through pharmacies linked to telemedicine providers. Our big idea is scaled, sustainable improvements in quality community health care, through SwipeRx, the largest pharmacy-focused application in Southeast Asia, connecting more than 245,000 pharmacy professionals together in this region.
Link to full step-by-step moonshot policy proposal coming soon.