Medicines manufacturer Omega Pharma plans to "make history" by creating the first pharmacy to monitor customers' behaviour and test new products.

The company bought Warman-Freed Pharmacy in Golders Green, London on Monday (August 18) to gain a better understanding of the "challenges and opportunities" facing the profession. It planned to use the pharmacy to measure how much time customers spend in the store, which products they like, and the services they feel needed improving, it told C+D.

Omega Pharma would share this information with "everyone connected to community pharmacy", helping contractors improve their cash flow, inventory management and relationships with other healthcare professionals, it said.

The pharmacy will also allow customers to test new products and services, said Omega Pharma, which manufactures pain-relief drug Solpadeine and hayfever treatment BecoAllergy.

The manufacturer could not reveal which products it would test or how they would be tested. It was also "still defining" how it would monitor patients' behaviour in the pharmacy, it said.

By conducting product tests with patients in a "real environment" rather than the "virtual reality" centres favoured by pharmaceutical companies, findings would be more beneficial to the industry, said Omega Pharma UK general manager Neil Lister.

"This is about driving positive change for the industry as a whole so that together we can make sophisticated and evidenced-based business decisions centred on the pharmacy and the patient," he said.

Omega Pharma would wait six months before implementing the changes, which it hoped would offer the company an "unparalleled level of insight" into the "customer journey". The "unique project" would not affect the existing role of the pharmacist in the store, it added.

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