OK, let's take look at @RoyalMail #Health (no @Twitter handle as yet):
royalmail.com/health
It's apparently "a new #business division working across the #healthcare industry, including local #pharmacies"...
...though its main partners at this point appear to be @Pharmacy2U - of which more later - and "exciting new service" #Charac, an app & #SaaS platform which advertises on @facebook, @instagram and @LinkedIn but again doesn't (yet) have a @Twitter handle:
charac.co.uk
...that's 👆 #Charac's front page, BTW; the pitch it makes to #pharmacies themselves 👇 is somewhat different:
charac.co.uk/pharmacies/
I dunno about you, but "Creating new ways to make more money that isn’t dependent on NHS finance" sounds a lot like #marketing to patients...
Now let me be clear: #pharmacies are businesses, they've always sold other stuff, and helping patients get their #prescriptions more easily is a good thing.
BUT there are ways to do this, and ways NOT to do this - which brings me back to "the nation's largest online pharmacy"...
The history of @Pharmacy2U is long and checkered. By its founder's own admission, when he first set it up in 1999 it was #illegal to send medicines through the post:
medium.com/authority-maga…
Our first direct run-in with @Pharmacy2U was in 2015 when, after years of receiving complaints from patients about being #marketed about their specific conditions and diagnoses, we complained to @ICOnews and @TheGPhC.
The subsequent investigations uncovered that #Pharmacy2U...
...had sold NHS patients' information to some real unsavourables 👇
@Pharmacy2U, at that point part-owned by @EMISHealth, was fined £130,000 by @ICOnews; its commercial director was suspended for 3 months by @TheGPhC & its founder was given a warning...
medconfidential.org/2015/uks-large…
...which you can read about here:
medconfidential.org/wp-content/upl…
and here:
pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/p…
Oh, and @EMISGroup took its Director off @Pharmacy2U's Board and sold its shareholding in the company for £1.5 million:
emisgroupplc.com/media/1301/emi… (p5)
As is the way of the world, @Pharmacy2U was picked up by #PrivateEquity (first @BGFinvestments, then #GSquareCapital) but struggled to make any profit, and kept making missteps* - so this @RoyalMail Health deal must be a bit of a godsend!
__
*e.g. express.co.uk/news/uk/829082…
It remains to be seen what'll happen now @RoyalMail has lent its muscle. For patients' sake, one must hope the activities of its partners will be much better #regulated.
And we still believe only a #criminal ban on #marketing to patients will prevent crooks #preying on patients.
As did @TheBMA:
gponline.com/bma-calls-jail…
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