Association of Over-The-Counter Pharmaceutical Sales with Influenza-Like-Illnesses to Patient Volume in an Urgent Care Setting

We studied the association between OTC pharmaceutical sales and volume of patients with influenza-like-illnesses (ILI) at an urgent care center over one year. OTC pharmaceutical sales explain 36% of the variance in the patient volume, and each standard deviation increase is associated with 4.7 more patient visits to the urgent care center (p<0.0001). Cross-correlation function analysis demonstrated that OTC pharmaceutical sales are significantly associated with patient volume during non-flu season (p<0.0001), but only the sales of cough and cold (p<0.0001) and thermometer (p<0.0001) categories were significant during flu season with a lag of two and one days, respectively. Our study is the first study to demonstrate and measure the relationship between OTC pharmaceutical sales and urgent care center patient volume, and presents strong evidence that OTC sales predict urgent care center patient volume year round. © 2013 Liu et al

Design of a National Retail Data Monitor for Public Health Surveillance

The National Retail Data Monitor receives data daily from 10,000 stores, including pharmacies, that sell health care products. These stores belong to national chains that process sales data centrally and utilize Universal Product Codes and scanners to collect sales information at the cash register. The high degree of retail sales data automation enables the monitor to collect information from thousands of store locations in near to real time for use in public health surveillance. The monitor provides user interfaces that display summary sales data on timelines and maps. Algorithms monitor the data automatically on a daily basis to detect unusual patterns of sales. The project provides the resulting data and analyses, free of charge, to health departments nationwide. Future plans include continued enrollment and support of health departments, developing methods to make the service financially self-supporting, and further refinement of the data collection system to reduce the time latency of data receipt and analysis

User-centered design and usability testing of RxMAGIC: a prescription management and general inventory control system for free clinic dispensaries

Abstract Background To address challenges related to medication management in underserved settings, we developed a system for Prescription Management And General Inventory Control, or RxMAGIC, in collaboration with the Birmingham Free Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. RxMAGIC is an interoperable, web-based medication management system designed to standardize and streamline the dispensing practice and improve inventory control in a free clinic setting. This manuscript describes the processes used to design, develop, and deploy RxMAGIC. Methods We transformed data from previously performed mixed-methods needs assessment studies into functional user requirements using agile development methods. Requirements took the form of user stories that were prioritized to drive implementation of RxMAGIC as a web-application. A functional prototype was developed and tested to understand its perceived usefulness before developing a production system. Prior to deployment, we evaluated the usability of RxMAGIC with six users to diagnose potential interaction challenges that may be avoided through redesign. The results from this study were similarly prioritized and informed the final features of the production system. Results We developed 45 user stories that acted as functional requirements to incrementally build RxMAGIC. Integrating with the electronic health record at the clinic was a requirement for deployment. We utilized health data standards to communicate with the existing order entry system; an outgoing electronic prescribing framework was leveraged to send prescription data to RxMAGIC. The results of the usability study were positive, with all tested features receiving a mean score of four or five (i.e. somewhat easy or easy, respectively) on a five-point Likert scale assessing ease of completion, thus demonstrating the system’s simplicity and high learnability. RxMAGIC was deployed at the clinic in October 2016 over a two-week period. Conclusions We built RxMAGIC, an open-source, pharmacist-facing dispensary management information system that augments the pharmacist’s ability to efficiently deliver medication services in a free clinic setting. RxMAGIC provides electronic dispensing and automated inventory management and alerting capabilities. We deployed RxMAGIC at the Birmingham Free Clinic and measured its usability with potential users. In future work, we plan to continue to measure the impact of RxMAGIC on pharmacist efficiency and satisfaction