The Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) is a professional body representing pharmacists and its mission is to promote the professional and economic interests of its members. Membership is drawn largely from community pharmacy proprietors and community pharmacy employees but also includes pharmacists from industry and wholesale, hospital, army and academic and administration. Members of the union aim to provide the best possible professional pharmaceutical service to all members of the public. They are committed to delivering a quality, accessible, personal and professional service that puts the patient first and has as its primary goal the optimisation of the health and well-being of society.
Homegrown innovation
“The Irish Pharmaceutical Union is a great example of local home grown technological innovation and testament to the benefits of working with Oracle technology and an Oracle ISV partner, Coolamber Solutions,” commented Paraic Kennedy, sales manager, Oracle Ireland.
“Partners are critical to Oracle’s strategy for delivering technology solutions to small and midsize businesses, offering solutions that are cost effective, and deployable – quickly and easily. There are over 100 independent software vendors in Ireland that are part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, who develop applications that are built on, integrate with or embed Oracle products. Oracle and these vendors meet customers’ needs with industry-leading solutions that are powered by Oracle technology or are tightly linked to Oracle applications. When you choose an Oracle-based solution or service from an Oracle partner, you are deploying world-class Oracle products plus the extended capabilities of a partner that works hand-in-hand with Oracle and provides for specific functional area, market, or industry needs.”
Innovative approach
To ensure the achievement of their aims, the Irish Pharmaceutical Union has developed and made available to its members increased benefits ranging from detailed product information to advice on a whole range of legal and other matters. In response, membership has continued to grow as the union actively works to respond to members’ needs and concerns. This is achieved by an innovative and comprehensive approach to the provision of services and applications to its members.
Information provider
As part of its service to members, the IPU distributes professional and ethical details about existing and new pharmaceutical products. These details are provided by the IPU’s product information system. In addition to standard details such as trade name, product presentation, barcode etc., the system includes product ingredients, poison class, counselling codes, warning codes, ATC codes, PA code, GMS number and EPOS categories. This system provides vital product information to its 1600 member pharmacists who use this data to provide a professional quality service to patients. In addition to its members, product file information is licensed to non-members such as health boards, hospitals, GPs, pharmacy chains, wholesalers, pharmacy software vendors, market research companies etc.
Coolamber as partner
The product information system is a bespoke system developed by Coolamber Solutions and involved an extensive data conversion exercise from a Foxpro database. The system currently caters for over 100,000 products. The IPU took the strategic decision, in conjunction with Coolamber, to use Oracle Database and development tools for their core applications. Having initiated a thorough analysis of the current and future development requirements of the organisation it opted for the integration, scalability, security and functionality of the Oracle environment.
Coolamber worked closely with the IPU to ensure the system exactly met the needs of their clients. The system has been a major success for the IPU, enabling it to enhance its service to members and clients and to respond in a more timely manner to the changing marketplace.
Building on the success of the product system, the IPU then turned its attention to the need for a membership system incorporating excellent CRM functionality. Again, Coolamber Solutions were awarded the contract and developed a new streamlined system to enable the IPU to store details of its 1600 members and to track and account for membership fees. The system was developed using the Oracle Development Toolset and went live in 2005. The ease with which this integrated system enables the IPU to access member details, check membership status and issue regular communications as well as issuing invoices and processing payments is a big plus. As with the product information system, the membership system project also involved an extensive data conversion exercise to map the existing data to the new Oracle schema.
Eoin Hester, MD of Coolamber Solutions says “The Oracle PartnerNetwork enables organisations like the IPU to access Oracle’s huge investment in leading edge technology while working with local companies like Coolamber who understand their business and work as committed business partners in a long term relationship. The Oracle Partnership sits well with Coolamber’s approach of partnership with our clients and allows us to keep fully abreast of leading edge technology as well as the evolving needs of our clients.”
“Coolamber Solutions worked very closely with the Irish Pharmaceutical Union to ensure they fully understand the union’s business requirements including their long term strategy to ensure that the solutions delivered aligned with the union’s strategic goals and objectives not simply today but into the future. The result is a solution built on Oracle’s leading edge technology that delivers today and will continue to deliver in the future,” Kennedy concluded.
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