Insights on Technology That Builds Futuristic Businesses

Pharmacy Management Software Development: Features & Functionalities You Can’t Miss

By Arun G Goyal

December 3, 2021

Are you planning to set up a new pharmacy or intend to revamp the present one? Well, going by the fact that technology is blooming and the medical sector is a crucial sector in a community, the software development of this sector is quite crucial, isn’t it?

Hence, investing in pharmacy management software is always a good idea. Nowadays, these systems have become an essential part of any pharmacy that is keen to stay competitive and believes in delivering better care to the consumers via an automated and efficient process. Pharmacies can customize & streamline the workflow with a Pharmacy management system that comes packed with myriad features and functionalities to boost efficiency, safety as well as profitability.

By implementing this system, you can benefit in several ways, as it also makes management extremely easy, by addressing shortages (if any), streamlining work, smoothly running the pharmacy, fetching prompts & correct reports whenever required, helps in centralized data storage with security and the most important one, customer satisfaction.

Before we move forward with the modules and other things to be included in your pharmacy management software, let’s discuss what is a pharmacy management system?

Summary for Quick Glance

With the rapid growth in the sector of medical and healthcare, demands for the increasing number of medical practitioners and an effective drug management app to handle everything in a single touch. ‘Cause dealing with everything manually serves fewer people in time. Thus pharmacy management software is an online cloud-based system that quickly facilitates pharmacy functionality like drug record creation, inventory monitoring, patient, vendor, and company data records management. The pharmacy management software is distinguished based on demand on two types; custom-made pharmacy, and ready-made pharmacy. You can choose any type according to the need you want to serve to the user. For the custom-made pharmacy software, you need to look at extensive features and functionalities to develop.

Features like user-friendly record system, full prescription management, following the HIPAA compliances, AR management, curating the drug database, drug file updates, and inventory management are the must-haves.

This blog will help you out with detailed information about the pharmacy management software and comprehensive features, and functionalities.

Understanding Online Pharmacy Management System in Brief

Quite a common question, what is a pharmacy management system?

Well, an easy answer. Pharmacy management system software is an online tool that records, supports, and enables functionality that maintains and organizes the use of medicines in pharmacies. These systems can easily be integrated with the hospital or computer physician operator to keep a record of the medicines used.

Some of the basic features of pharmacy management software are user interface, data entry and retention, and security limits to protect patient health information.

Here we present the common pharmacy management system modules which are included in the pharmacy management software development:

Pharmacy Management Software Market Overview

The global pharmacy management software was esteemed to be found at $15.6 B in the year 2020, with its cyclone growth it is expected to reach $35.4 B at the end of the year 2026.
We have seen an annual growth rate in this industry of 14.60%.
Key market players in the pharmacy software industry are ACG Infotech Ltd, Allscripts healthcare Solution Inc., Datascan, Becton Dickinson and Co., etc.
Solutions type the pharmacy market domain companies have offered to the market are Pharmacy Inventory management system, pharmacy data management system, pharmacy compounding software system, pharmacy benefits software management system, and others.
While the American College of Pharmacy has estimated that around 5 billion prescriptions are disposed of in 2021 with the popularity of the automated pharmacy software in the USA markets.
One mobile pharmacy company, mobile Medsoft allows the inventory management system that allows the retailers to utilize the maximum turn flow of inventory as well as decent monetary of their resources.
In addition to this, the top pharmaceutical products available online are Humira, Eliquis, and Revlimid. While the drug named Oncologics is in the top drug sales in the market globally.

Pharmacy Management System Modules

When talking about the digital pharmacy management system, different modules make a complete pharmacy management system. Its functioning needs to take care of the following points:

Customizable Software & Generates Reports- The software is easily customizable and is also capable of generating various reports.
Medicine Purchase Request & Order- It is to manage the purchase requests and order requests received for the medicines.
Drug Issue to Patients & Billing- This is to maintain the record of drugs issued to patients and also the billing that took place during the day/month/year.
Physical Stock Verification & Adjustment- This module in any pharmacy computer system is responsible to verify the physical stock and the decision, regarding adjustment (if required) that can take place.
Supplier & Manufacturer Information- It is again vital as this keeps a record of the supplier/manufacturer information from whom you buy the medicines/who is responsible for the manufacturing of those medicines.
Reports About Stock-in-Hand & Complete Details of Medicines- It gives information about the stock that is in hand with the entire medicine details.
Maintenance of Medicine Stock- Future decisions can easily be taken based on this, by maintaining the medicine stock as this way you know when the stock needs to be updated.
Destruction of Expired Items- It is again vital to have the information about expired items that need to be destructed so that the process can be held timely in the pharmacy management system.
Return of Items Nearing Expiry- There is a record of items nearing the expiry date, so this way they can be returned on time.
Automatic Reorder Level/Minimum Stock Setting- There is a module in the pharmacy inventory management of the minimum stock setting, so that can be activated by mentioning a minimum stock and the Automatic reorder level refers to the quantity threshold at which your software will automatically a new order for stock.

When it comes to the development of pharmacy management system project modules then you need to make sure that no point is left untouched. The slightest mistake could mess things up for you and your service may face some serious issues.

Before considering the important features of pharmacy app development, let’s see how dedicated developers come up with an efficient pharmacy management system.

How to Create a Pharmacy Management System?

If you own a pharmacy store that is yet not digitalized then you understand how to juggle your pharmacy routine processes such as retail, dispensing, outpatient services. Here we have discussed a few issues that we have faced when we all worked on our first pharmacy software. There are four core steps you should follow on the way to going digital:

1. Share Your Business Goals: Know exactly what you are looking for. Are you looking for an inventory management system, a CRM, an ERP, or a system that automates almost all of your functioning? At Octal IT Solution, we can help you work on all the important aspects of your business and deliver highly rewarding solutions.

2. Listen to the Users: Mainly the pharmacy management systems would be used by your staff and not you. When you reach the third party with a request to develop such a system, consider the requirements of the users involved. Talk to your staff, suppliers, technicians, and even doctors prescribing the medicines to bridge the gaps and understand functions that need to be integrated.

3. Record Your Insights: What you gather from your team and others is some important data that you need to focus on. If you want your pharmacy management software development team to deliver solutions that fulfill your business needs, then you need to be sure that you have recorded and analyzed the data from your team well.

4. Find a vendor: Choosing the right pharmacy software development partner for your business is important. They must have industry expertise and experience in providing solutions that can make it easy for you to take care of your business.

We have discussed earlier various modules that you need to integrate with your software. The most important ones are:

ERP
CRM
Storefront

To develop an online pharmacy management system for a pharmaceutical B2B company, our mobile app development team considers the following steps.

Step1. Setting up and integrating ERP. It is important to take care of the employees and other aspects related to the business. There could be chances that instead of a new ERP software development we would need to upgrade your existing ERP.

Step2. Customer relationship management is quite a big deal. If you want to consider the responses and the requirements of your customers then integrating a well-developed CRM software would help you analyze the requirements of your customers and come up with better business strategies.

Step3. To expand your business and retain your old clients you would need to have a well-developed storefront that would make things easier for you. Share the sales pitches, checkouts, discounts, etc. to upscale your business.

These are the most basic pharmacy management system requirements that could earn you great results and help you expand your business. When looking forward to creating pharmacy management solutions it is important to take care of the feature set. The features must be designed in a way that makes it really easy for the user group to deliver solutions that are interesting and engaging.

Exemplary Features of Pharmacy Management System

In the case of the pharmacy system software, the developing company desires for it to be complex, and robust. Like, it should be able to track inventory, generate several reports, manage workflow, and manage complex billing adjudications in real-time, keep track of comprehensive dispensing data, and a lot more. It involves dozens of essential features, so let’s explore them here.

User-Friendly Record System: The purpose of the pharmacy management system is to input & recall patient, drug & prescription information easily. This system is quite user-friendly and it has the ability to keep a record of patient, drug & prescription information, which is certainly come useful for future purchases or other purposes.
HIPAA and Regulatory Compliance: It goes without saying that the pharmacy system must be aligned with legal requirements in the field hence it must comply with HIPAA & regulatory compliance (consisting of FDA-required MedGuides& DEA Reporting.
Full Prescription Management: As integrated with ePrescription, the system offers to manage the full prescription given by the doctors. It would bring the right drug combination for your ailment and help you meet your needs without errors.
Automated Claims Processing: Of course, the system requires automated claim processing systems and it keeps an entire record of the claim submissions including adjudication (V5.1, etc.)
Accuracy & Safety: As it is the question of many lives, hence online pharmacy software offers fail-safe features for accuracy & safety, leaving no scope for errors.
Complete & Accurate Drug Interaction & Other Databases: The pharmacy database management system is able to detect Drug-Drug Interactions and this way it reduces the chances of ADEs, preserves patients’ safety, and prevents related medical and legal problems.
A/R Management: Account Receivables Management is crucial in the arena of healthcare to ensure smooth & successful functioning and that the owed amount is refunded back in the shortest time possible. It looks after denied claims and reopens them to receive maximum reimbursement.
On-line Reconciliation: It’s a cost-effective feature to increase cash flow, reduce write-offs and costs. This is a vital feature of the pharmacy management program in increasing profits & revenues.
Drug-file Updates: All the updates regarding the new drugs introduced in the market and other drugs related information can be found in the system.
Auto Dr. Fax: It allows your doctor to call in or fax the patient’s refill to the pharmacist, saving the patient’s trip to the Pharmacy.
Tailored Labels: This feature facilitates customized prescription drug labels, hence making the handlings a lot easier.
Electronic Wholesaler Ordering: This feature ensures up-to-date costing and inventory, which ties into reliable margin reporting and inventory valuations.
Reporting: As the month ends, you should be able to tally the revenues generated by the stock movement. You need to be informed of the sale of each unit of an inventory, also what has been disposed of or damaged. Hence you can ensure that you don’t lose even a penny without it being accounted for.

Next, let’s explore the additional pharmacy management system features, which can be included in the system to make it all the more worthwhile.

Additional Features of Pharmacy Management Software

Any software for pharmacy needs to be ladened with features and should be built in a way that makes every aspect of pharmacy management easier and flawless. With the least human intervention in the process, you would be able to take your business to better heights.

Data Loading

As soon as your pharmacy goes live, you will certainly need to deal with lots of data that needs to be put into the software with there being a huge number of items that have to be maintained in the pharmacy. It will obviously be a mammoth task to mention the details of each inventory one by one, regardless of the number of resources you put for this purpose. Even if you go ahead and do it, there is no guarantee that the data entered into the system is error-free, hence it is vital that your pharmacy software systems have the feature to load an entire data from an Excel/CSV file to lessen your startup struggles.

Pill Imaging

This helps in preventing incorrect medication dispensing. The quality assurance check takes place; pills are displayed & compared with bottle contents thus ensuring that correct drugs are available. This brings a valuable control point that ensures the accuracy and quality of dispensing prescriptions.

Inventory Management

This is among the most useful features integrated in this kind of system as it helps in boosting efficiency & reducing pharmacy inventory costs via perpetual usage-based purchase decisions. When inventory is tracked via an automated system, the pharmacy staff will not need to indulge in labor-intensive inventory activities, and their time can be utilized well in other important activities. Moreover, this feature also improves security as it is able to control access to medications in the pharmacy and promotes medication dispensing accuracy.

Electronic Prescriptions

Using this feature, your pharmacy will be receiving new & refill prescriptions directly into the pharmacy management systems from doctors for review, and this will be helpful in the faster completion of the dispensing process.

Also Read: Doctor on Demand Mobile App Development Cost and Key Features

e-Signature Capture

This feature is quite useful in your pharmacy billing system project as it enables you to electronically track acknowledgment for each prescription. Signature capture interfaces assist pharmacy staff in saving time at POS, while the prescription sale & credit/debit card can also be signed in one transaction.

Barcode Verification

Without any doubt, it is an important element of pharmacy management systems, as it offers help with several aspects throughout the system, such as retrieval of refill information, Point of Sale (POS) scanning, verification of dispensed products, which enhances efficiency and accuracy.

Advanced Reporting

This feature is extremely a crucial one as it allows the pharmacy staff to make reports faster with the help of an extensive easy-to-use library of built-in reports, and also custom reports which are based on the particular information that you wish to track & include in the report

Clinical Integration

It works wonders when the scope of the pharmacy management system is extended and integrated with a number of clinical tools that pharmacists can use all along the day. For instance, drug interaction details, a dosing guide, and also lab data (whenever required). Also, integrate MTM services into the system.

POS Integration

A centralized Point of Sale system can be integrated into the Pharmacy Management System Software to manage cash flows well on all the floors, chains, owned by the Pharmacy. All of these features combined will surely help you take your pharmacy to a whole new level. So keep this checklist handy and make sure the system you choose can answer YES to all of the above.

Pharmacy Management Mobile Application

The mobile application enables pharmacy employees to access all the required information on the go and it really helps in real-time decision making. Taking your pharmacy management system on the mobile platform will boost business efficiency and will simplify the business process.

Benefits of Our Pharmacy Management Software

With the help of the right software, you will be able to deliver the highest level of care to your patients while it will also help in maximizing profits and allow you to spend more time generating new business. There are many such benefits associated with Pharmacy Management Software, so let’s explore the advantages of pharmacy management system:

Low cost of ownership
It is helpful in increasing productivity and resultantly profitability.
It is a flexible system that can be customized as per your requirements.
There are wide-ranging modules created keeping in mind all the requirements, with a separate login for pharmacy administrators & employees.
It offers Smart User Management by assigning different privileges to different users. It is also able to manually set parameters for different users.
With it being integrated with Barcode Scanner, it is able to record details easily and hence speeds up the sale procedure.
It is a lot more than just a Pharmacy Management System, as it also takes care of Supply Chain Management.
There are a number of useful features available in the system such as Expiry Date Alert & Minimum Stock Alert.
Quite promptly & quickly the system provides the analysis and information about the business, which is helpful in better decision-making.
It offers a Centralized Data Storage facility as well as Easy & Interactive retrieval of data.
The system is reliable & secure as during the development of the system, all the major threats were considered and all preventive measures are also taken care of.
It boasts a simple, user-friendly & efficient user-interface design, as all the key elements are taken care of during the designing of the system.

Read Also: Healthcare CRM Software Solutions – Key Features & Benefits

Popular Pharmacy Apps Globally

The popular medical pharmacy technician apps contain all of the critical information of the latest drug prescription, any side effects, and uses. Here is the list below for major platforms, Android and iOS.

CVS Pharmacy: This is known to be the best online pharmacy app for you. Consult with your doc respective your health hazard. This app consist of many features includes drug admin information, potential interactions with the patients and doc, examining the side effects, and many more disorders in the body of the patients. You can now order your refills, check the status and view the prescription history.

Video chat with the doc within the app, upload the document and get the prescription within the same day.

This is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Capsule Pharmacy: this is one of a kind app, friendly, faster, delivers the medication within the same day. In case of any urgency, if you need to get the up-to-date information of any of the medical consultants at your pace within 15 seconds, this app is the best companion for you. Sync all of your prescriptions within minutes.

Features like drug safety information, drug interactions, specific drug insurance information, refill and copay with the insurance company, and many more are very interactive for the user. There is a drug price calculator which helps to estimate the accurate price of the drug.

1MG: It is the global name in the market of drug dosage apps, with more than millions of drugs with price ranges to choose from.

This app allows you to find out the best quality of drug just by adding filters like drug brand name. You will fetch the list of drugs products and their ingredients aside.

It offers many features to you. Set the pill reminder, fix the appointments with the doc before, AI feature to get the quick info about the doc first, lab tests from various labs, etc. Find out the best quality of drug at your nearby. Or submit your demand for the drug in case of shortage, with the pricing, etc.

MEDSCAPE: It is the leading comprehensive drug repository that allows you to choose from a wide range of drugs like herbal segment, alternative medicines, OTC drugs, and many more. The built-in feature like drug interaction checker allows to detect the of patient safety, accurate recording, any severe interactions, etc. any affected person can find out their disease with the disease detecting feature from over 4k diseases and clinical conditions.

The app is updated and follows the latest policies of the government and any medical news.

Why Do You Require Training to Use the System?

Well, to get the most out of your system, it is vital that you learn to properly use it. Usually, it happens that most of the owners or operators will at times use a few of the software features and not leverage the full capability of the system. And then there are times when users will transfer/convert bad data from another application into a new application and thus they end up with the same issues that they faced with their old data.

Pharmacy Management software offers a lot of functionalities and to be able to make the best use of them, you need to use them properly and must teach the usage to your staff as well. As you select a healthcare software development firm to create this system for you to ensure that they offer training that keeps to updated with software’s capabilities and can offer insights into how you can use the program more efficiently. To help you through the struggle we offer pharmacy management system project documentation where you can check the details for any confusion.

Technology Stack for Pharmacy Management Software

The pharmacy software price is highly influenced by the technology stack that we use. The experts associated with us are well-versed with various web and mobile app development technologies and can help you have a solution that serves your purpose of developing Pharmacy management software.

Front End Technology: Java, Swift, Angular, HTML, CSS, React
Back End Technology: Node.js, Laravel, Python
Payment Gateway: PayPal, API, Braintree SDK, Stripe API
Location Tracking: MapKit Framework, Google Maps
Push Notifications: SMS and In-app messaging
Database: PostgreSQL, MongoDB
Analytics: Google Analytics
Cloud Environment: AWS, Google Cloud
Social Login: Facebook Mobile SDKs, Twitter APIs, etc.

When talking about pharmacy software price, it depends on the third party that you have hired. For some countries, the resources are available easily and the cost of development is less and for others, the cost of development is more due to limited resources.

Developers in the US: $150-$250 an hour
Developers in Europe: $120-$180 an hour
Developers in Asia: $40-$80 an hour

Just reach to a reliable development firm and get our pharmacy management system ready. To develop a strong and well-rewarding Pharmacy Management System one needs to have a team that functions well.

The members of an ideal product engineering team are:

Project Manager: The project manager is expected to take care of the deadlines and communicate with the clients and the team to run the development process smoothly.
Developers: We would need developers who would work on the product and bring on the screen an application that is well-planned and highly intuitive and engaging.
UI/UX Designers: It is significant that the UI/UX designers would make it easier for the development teams to deliver solutions that are easy and interesting.
Testers: The quality analysts and testers make it a point to be at your disposal. They verify all the elements of the process and take care of the functions and features.

If any of these fail to deliver the required results, then the team is informed and the modifications are done.

If you have a strong team to back you then you can enter the market with a really interesting solution.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, with the help of the right system, you will be able to make better business decisions and it gives you an edge in the arena of pharmacy. In fact, including a financial model will also help in evaluating the financial impact of pharmacy management software on your business. So, go ahead and choose the expert healthcare IT service provider to get the best results.