Customer profile analysis of the mail-order pharmacy MedicineGo using the example of the German mail-order pharmacy MedicineGo

Pharmacies in transition - digitalisation measures, connection to the telematics infrastructure and the oligopoly position of leading mail-order pharmacies. Not only meeting the technical implementations in the digital transformation, but also satisfying customers are important issues for public pharmacies. While retail pharmacies have access to data on their regular customers, we know little about customers of mail-order pharmacies. As the trend to order medicines online grows, mail-order medicines will take on an increasingly important role. It is expected that the planned introduction of electronic prescriptions in Germany in mid-2021 will lead to a further increase in online sales. The research question is: What does the customer profile of a mail-order pharmacy look like? Thus, this study focuses on an economic customer profiling of a mail-order pharmacy using the example of the nationally operating mail-order pharmacy MedicineGo. Based on the assumption that younger people between 18 and 50 years of age prefer to use the internet as an ordering medium, due to a more savvy use of computers, a quantitative analysis of empirical data will present essential market research data. In order to interpret the results of the quantitative analysis and to establish causalities, additional expert interviews with the MedicineGo administrator and other employees of the mail-order pharmacy as well as a qualitative literature analysis were conducted by means of qualitative analysis. By means of quantitative analysis, it was empirically shown that with regard to the customer profile of the mail-order pharmacy MedicineGo, 72% of customers use the direct web shop as a sales channel for their orders, the proportion of women is about ten percentage points higher than that of men, and the largest purchasing groups by number of orders are persons between 51 and 80 years of age. The quantitative analysis showed that older people (over 50 years) prefer to use the mail-order pharmacy, so another result of the study is that public pharmacies compete with mail-order pharmacies for the same customer group.

Factors associated with adjuvant endocrine therapy adherence in non-metastatic breast cancer.

533 Background: Over 50% of breast cancer patients prescribed adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) are nonadherent during the recommended 5-year course of therapy. We investigated the role of cancer medication delivery on adherence, including mail order pharmacy use, number of pharmacies and copays. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 15,769 commercially insured breast cancer patients age 18-64 with newly diagnosed breast cancer in 2007-2015 that initiated ET. Incident breast cancer was identified by a validated algorithm which identifies mainly non-metastatic breast cancer. We examined the association between 12-month AET adherence (proportion of days covered by fills ≥0.80) and mail order pharmacy use, number of pharmacies, and AET copays. We used Poisson regression to estimate nonadherence risk ratios and adjusted for demographics (age, income, race, urbanicity), comorbidities, total medications, primary cancer treatments (surgery, radiation, chemo, and ET initiated), and generic AI availability. Sensitivity analyses were conducted using alternate specifications for independent variables. To test whether any observed differences were due to self-selection, we also conducted a negative control analysis. Results: Most patients were white (74.4%) and age 55-64 (43.3%). Only 16% of patients used a mail order pharmacy for ET fills, most patients only used one pharmacy (58.8%) and 25.2% had a co-pay of $20 or more. In the primary analysis, mail order patients were more likely to be adherent to their ET (aRR 1.21; 95% CI 1.18-1.24), patients using one pharmacy were more likely to be adherent (1 vs 3+: aRR 1.09; 95% CI 1.06-1.13), and patients with lower copays were more likely to be adherent (quartile 1 vs 4: aRR 1.04; 95% CI 1.01-1.08). Results were consistent across sensitivity analyses, and there was no association between mail order and copays and the negative control outcome of any pneumonia diagnoses. Conclusions: Medication delivery factors are associated with adherence to breast cancer AET. Future work should investigate whether interventions to streamline medication delivery could improve adherence for this population.

Duplicate Prescriptions of Inhaled Medications for Obstructive Lung Diseases

Introduction Inhalative treatments with metered dose aerosols and dry powder inhalers are the backbone of the pharmacotherapy for asthma and COPD. In the last decade many new and generic inhalative bronchodilators were launched at the German market, both monotherapies and fixed dose double bronchodilator (LABA/LAMA, beta adrenergic and antimuscarinic) or LABA and inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) and triple (LABA/LAMA/ICS) combinations. According to two surveys in 2015 among respiratory physicians we expected a high proportion of patients receiving duplicate prescriptions, e. g. a fixed dose new LABA/LAMA combination in addition to an existing ICS/LABA fixed dose combination. Methodology We searched the database of a large mail order pharmacy (DocMorris) to identify duplicate prescriptions of inhalative drugs for a patient by the same or by two or more different physicians during a 3 months period. Results Unexpectedly, we found as little as around 1 % duplicate prescriptions for the same patient. Duplicate prescriptions involving combination products were found to be much more common than duplicate prescriptions of different mono-products. Irrespective the low percentage number of all prescriptions we saw in just one large mail order pharmacy several thousands of erroneous prescriptions. Conclusion At least in the setting of this mail order pharmacy duplicate (i. e. contraindicated and potentially dangerous) prescriptions are relatively rare. Prescribers and pharmacists should be aware of the issue of duplicates – especially when prescribing or filling prescriptions with combination products.

Patients' satisfaction factors mining and sentiment analysis of B2C mail-order pharmacy reviews

BackgroundIn recent years, mail-order pharmacies have been accepted by increasingly more patients, and the prospects for mail-order pharmacies are optimistic. This article explores the patients’ satisfaction factors addressed in Business to Customer (B2C) mail-order pharmacy reviews and analyzes the sentiments expressed in the reviews. The goal of this work is to help B2C mail-order pharmacy enterprises identify patients’ concerns, continuously improve the health services level.MethodsThis paper was based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model. From a B2C mail-order pharmacy of integrated e-commerce and a vertical B2C mail-order pharmacy (JD.COM and J1.COM, respectively), 136,630 pieces of over-the-counter (OTC) drug review data posted from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2018 were selected as samples and used to explore the satisfaction factors of B2C mail-order pharmacy patients regarding the entire drug purchasing process. Then, the sentiments expressed in the drug reviews were analyzed with SnowNLP.ResultCategorization of the 12 factors identified by LDA showed that 5 factors were related to logistics; these 5 factors, which also included the most drug reviews, made up 38.5% of the reviews. The number of factors related to drug prices was second, with 3 factors, and reviews of drug prices made up 25.5% of the reviews. Customer service and drug effects each had two related factors, and a smaller percentage of these reviews (13.95%) were related to drug effects. Patients still maintain positive opinions of JD.COM and J1.COM. However, some opinions on logistics and drug prices are expressed.Conclusion The most important task for mail-order pharmacies is to improve logistics. It is better to develop self-built logistics. Both types of B2C mail-order pharmacies can improve patient viscosity by implementing marketing strategies. With regard to customer service, focusing on improving employees' service attitudes is necessary.