Innovation awards finalist: PharmacyConnect delivers pharmacy apps to speed up patient prescriptions

Cormac McKenna is the founder of PharmacyConnect which builds own brand apps for pharmacies to speed up the processing of patient prescriptions. Covid-19 was the initial driving force behind the platform’s development, but in a sector crying out for technology solutions, McKenna could see the potential for a system that would work long-term to manage requests and even payments.

Dealing with prescriptions queries absorbs a lot of pharmacists’ time so McKenna’s aim was to build a system that would manage the situation more efficiently. With PharmacyConnect, participating pharmacies get their own branded app which customers are invited to download. Depending on how heavily the pharmacy want to populate the app, features such as integrated payments and a prompts list of regular buys, can be included.

Cormac McKenna of Pharmacy Connect at The Irish Times Innovation Awards 2023 final judging day. Photograph: Conor McCabe Photography. — Cormac McKenna of Pharmacy Connect at The Irish Times Innovation Awards 2023 final judging day. Photograph: Conor McCabe

In most instances prescriptions go directly from doctors to pharmacies often leaving patients unsure as to whether a prescription has been received, filled and is ready for collection. With the app, patients can be notified when their order is ready.

“Attempts to deliver workable patient apps in the past have largely failed to gain widespread adoption due to poor execution,” McKenna says. “We are using up-to-date technologies to deliver apps at scale for iOS and Android and are increasingly using AI to help pharmacies process tasks more speedily. Early adopters are seeing up to 50 per cent of prescription orders processed through the system. It was suggested that older customers wouldn’t use the app, but this is not the case. We have patients in their 90s using it successfully.”