Chemists( pharmacists) in India are very busy, but they are a very under-utilised resource. Most of them are small mom-and-pop shops which spring up around hospitals, and are designed primarily to serve the needs of the patients in these hospitals. However, as retailing becomes more organised in India, and the big retail giants enter the country, drug retailing is going to undergo a sea change in the next few years. How can chemists differentiate themselves in order to remain competitive ?
I feel an important innovation they will need to provide will be a patient education service for their customers. All patients who take drugs have questions about the medicines they are taking - especially their side effects. Most doctors are just too busy to explain these properly. This is a major lacuna, which clever chemists can exploit, so that by providing this value-added service, they can beat the competition !
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