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The invention of the typewriter
In the early 1980s, the world of pharmacy was experiencing its early changes. Handwritten pharmacy dispensing labels were no longer permissible, and most pharmacies at that time invested in a typewriter.
Typewriters had already been around for over 100 years and whilst they could support dispensing, they couldn’t do much more. This prompted John Richardson, a Pharmacist, to develop our earliest version of a pharmacy dispensing program to print labels for drugs and keep a stock count of prescription drugs in a small dispensing pharmacy.
It was a great success and the software grew from strength to strength, evolving into a more powerful PMR system based on MS-DOS computers.
Pharmacy Manager: The UK's first Windows based Pharmacy Medical Record (PMR) system
Jump forward to the spring of 1998 and Sunrise, the first windows-based pharmacy medication record (PMR) system, was launched.
Sunrise was enhanced and renamed Pharmacy Manager in 2001, providing independent pharmacies as well as groups with more functionality than had ever been seen in a PMR before. Pharmacists were delighted with this new technology, as it helped them not only dispense prescriptions safely, but also manage their stock and business more effectively.
Pharmacy Manager continued to evolve with the changing pharmacy dispensing landscape offering; repeat management, care home support and group management. It was the first system to receive full roll out approval for the electronic prescription service in England as well as e-MAS, AMS and CMS in Scotland, fast becoming the UK’s market leading PMR.
A number of new features, introduced over this time, have now become integral to the way in which pharmacies function today. But as the pace of change in today’s world is getting faster, it’s time to up our game again.
Want to try Pharmacy Manager out for yourself and see how it can enhance your business? Book a demo with one of our experts.
What’s next for Pharmacy Manager?
Steve Bradley, the former Group Managing Director, explains “Today’s customers want their experience with technology to be simple, value adding and with real time outputs. At Cegedim, we are working hard to match these expectations. This is alongside the rapidly changing NHS, where the Long Term Plan outlines a vision for ‘fully integrated community-based healthcare’ and pharmacists play a prominent role in multidisciplinary teams, aligned with new primary care networks.”
Steve continues “We have embedded our commitment into a product experience goal that commits to delivering products and solutions that precisely match our customer’s needs, enhance the UK healthcare systems, and facilitate improvements in patient care and outcomes."
Our product has been in the market for over 20 years. We’ve listened to our customers and their feedback is very strong; they know and trust Pharmacy Manager but it must do more.
The next generation of pharmacy dispensing systems
Our customers told us that Pharmacy Manager should be easier to use. They also told us that in addition to being able to dispense drugs safely, they also need a PMR that can help manage and order stock, deliver services, automate workflows, maximise revenue opportunities and help manage costs. Last year, we combined our customers’ feedback with our expertise and transformed our flagship PMR, Pharmacy Manager, to make it work smarter and harder. This is an exciting evolutionary journey for our product; one that puts pharmacy’s needs at the heart of our delivery model.
We have created something that we are confident will delight our customers, and we can’t wait to showcase our new Pharmacy Manager.
