Jun 30, 2022|
JD Health Launched Online Pharmacy Consulting Service
by Vivian Yang
JD Health launched a pharmacy consulting service online on June 28th, providing users with more timely and professional pharmaceutical care in collaboration with experienced clinical pharmacists from offline hospitals.
The “Pharmacy Clinic” portal is integrated into JD Health’s App. Its scope of services ranges from evaluation of drug efficacy, recommendation for drug use optimization, follow-up of drug treatment, popularization of pharmaceutical knowledge and more.
Target users of the services include people who take a variety of medicines for chronic diseases treatment, who are using special drugs such as with special dosages or drug delivery devices, who are in special physical states such as during pregnancy, breastfeeding, or with hepatic and renal insufficiency and others, and who experience adverse drug reactions that need pharmacist’s monitoring and interpretation.
Data from China’s National Medical Products Administration showed that as of the end of this February, there are about 638.700 licensed pharmacists in the country, a number that is out of proportion to the size of China’s population of more than 1 billion people.
“It is imperative to move forward the digital transformation of pharmaceutical services,” said Jiawei Wang, deputy director of the Chinese Pharmacists Association. “By leveraging technological innovation for integrated outpatient service both online and offline and deepening home-based service, the social value of pharmacists can be maximized.”
A survey conducted by the West China Hospital of Sichuan University and cited in China Pharmaceutical E-Commerce Industry Research Report 2022, showed that patients have strong demand for online pharmaceutical services under the impact of the pandemic. Among the respondents, 91.6 percent prefer to be reminded by medication software; and 53.4 percent prefer to ask a pharmacist questions online, as opposed to 25.9 percent who choose to get advice from the drug counters in hospitals for clinical pharmacy questions.
Ever since the founding of JD Pharmacy, the omnichannel pharmaceutical retail business of JD Health, in 2016, the company has begun to offer online pharmacist consultations to its customers, becoming the first service center of its kind with COPC (Customer Operations Performance Center) standards and 100 percent licensed pharmacists. Meanwhile, JD Pharmacy actively adopts AI technology in building its smart pharmaceutical knowledge base and solutions, creating another layer of risk control for drug use in addition to doctors’ advice.
Yiting Wang, general manager of the pharmaceutical department of JD Health, noted that JD Health’s “Pharmacy Clinic” is designed to provide more professional, convenient, consistent and in-depth pharmaceutical service to meet users’ personalized drug use needs at the minimum cost.
The company will continue to build its pharmaceutical service capabilities that can help improve the distribution of medical resources across China and meet people’s growing health needs, contributing to the “Health China 2030” plan with the goal to provide better health services to every citizen, Wang added.