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17 Nov 2011

Day Lewis to plough £3m into thehealthcounter.com

Day Lewis is investing up to £3 million in marketing and developing its online pharmacy offer, thehealthcounter.com, in an attempt to make it a trusted household name.

The company hopes the website will become "a powerful one-stop shop for products and advice" and has already launched an online doctor service as part of it.

Patients can also send their prescriptions for the online pharmacy to dispense and will be able to choose from a range of more than 5,000 products on the site by the end of November.

But the website will focus on giving high-quality advice to patients, as well as selling products. "We don't want to cannibalise out prices and we don't want to devalue our service," said Day Lewis managing director Kirit Patel.

Over the next year, the website will be the subject of an intensive marketing campaign, which will include ads on the London Underground and in taxis. Day Lewis will also continue to develop the offering, with plans to consider launching a live pharmacist advice line alongside dentistry and optician services.
 

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Dario Bende, Non healthcare professional
Posted on 17 November 2011.
The much advertised "e-health" is finally taking off !
It is a huge enterprise though, with pharmacies partnering up with online resellers (e.g. thehealthcounter.com) and online doctors (www.dred.com in this case).
It's exciting that Day Lewis is committed to really expanding its services online, this is going to be a change as big as online banking.
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Rajive Patel, Community pharmacist
Posted on 17/11/11 13:06 in reply to Dario Bende.
Amazing. Well done. I needed this bit of news. It's really made my day. Thanks for all the hard effort C&D has gone to, to bring this to my attention. Maybe now you can retain the Editorial Team of the Year Award, 2nd year running.
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Rajive Patel, Community pharmacist
Posted on 17/11/11 13:06 in reply to Rajive Patel.
Oh, and please feel free to remove this post.....for legal reasons!
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Rajive Patel, Community pharmacist
Posted on 17/11/11 13:10 in reply to Rajive Patel.
Its very brave of Ceuta, who supply my pharmacy as they do many independents, to go directly in competition with us. Ceuta, I believe are 50% shareholders of thehealthcounter.com

Anyway, no more orders for Ceuta from me!
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Rajive Patel, Community pharmacist
Posted on 17/11/11 13:10 in reply to Rajive Patel.
Oh yeah and please feel free to remove that last post as well!
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Zoe Smeaton, C+D News Editor
Posted on 17/11/11 18:31 in reply to Rajive Patel.
The Healthcounter has clarified that although Ceuta Healthcare Group were once investors in The Healthcounter, this is no longer the case. The business is now a joint venture company made up of individual share holders, The Day Lewis Group and The Clark Group, and it is registered as such with Companies House.
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Rajive Patel, Community pharmacist
Posted on 17/11/11 20:18 in reply to Zoe Smeaton.
So I assume that they need to update their website, because as far as customers are concerned Ceuta are involved. Anyway I will download their credit report tomorrow and check on shareholders and investigate who each partner is. The I will report back. However, according the website, Ceuta ARE Partners.
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Neeraj Salwan, Superintendent
Posted on 18/11/11 01:03 in reply to Rajive Patel.
Rajive

did you find out who the other shareholders are? comeon Day Lewis dont lie saying you wont decimate prices- yes you will when you have 3million to claw back . Anyway theres lots of oppurtunity out their, make your own luck, bend the rules and enjoy your life....
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Benjamin D'Montigny, Dispensing assistant
Posted on 18 November 2011.
In one respect I can understand the need to digitize pharmacy, giving it access to a much wider range of people who don't even have to leave their household. Also means a company can reduce staffing costs, shop rental costs, aesthetics.

But then, on the other hand - pharmacy has always seemed to be in my humble opinion a place where it requires a human element to it. I don't know what everyone else thinks, but giving advice over the internet has a lot of potential to backfire. One example I can think of at the moment was in the news several months back involving a young teenager purchasing Oristat online at an internet pharmacy.

But dispite reservations, this is likely to be the way forward for the pharmacy industry with the upcoming EPS service being rolled out and the infamous green slip becoming obsolete.
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