Mobile Management and Prescription of Medication

The major method of treating disease in the developed world is through the prescription of drugs. It is estimated that, on a global basis, 3 billion prescriptions are issued annually. The fundamental process of prescribing and issuing medication is common in most parts of the world. Typically a patient will visit a General Practitioner (GP) who will diagnose any health problems and issue a prescription accordingly. It is then the duty of a pharmacist to dispense the medication based on this prescription and advise the patient on how it should be taken. In practice this process is much more complex as GP's must not only diagnose and prescribe, but must also consider the patient's profile in terms of possible allergies to certain medications and how the new prescription will interact with other treatments that may already have been prescribed. In addition to this, the prescribe-to-intake process for medication usually incorporates more entities than just the GP, patient and pharmacist. In many cases health insurers, government agencies and even pharmaceutical wholesalers will form part of the chain. One of the major expenses in the management of medication is payroll-time spent on the administrative duties needed to service the requirements of various health plan providers. Although not all attributed to medication related administration, it is estimated that between $0.25 and $0.40 of every healthcare dollar in the US is spent on excessive administration costs (Lee et al., 2000).