Walgreens Unveils New Pharmacy Design at Technology Conference

At the TEDMED conference, held last month in San Diego, Walgreens showcased the new pharmacy, health, and wellness experience it is unveiling at stores in the Chicago and Indianapolis markets.

The new format is designed to meet the changing needs of customers while offering more quality, cost-effective health care options. Features of the new stores include the following:

• A pharmacist desk area in front of the pharmacy counter to provide greater accessibility for consultation about medications and to provide additional clinical services.
• Private or semi-private consultation rooms that differentiate Walgreens from other drugstores and provide a customized environment for services such as immunizations, blood pressure and blood glucose testing, and help with self-injectable medications.
• A designated Health Guide - a Walgreens employee who is available to answer product and service questions.
• An open, redesigned layout with expanded fresh food and beauty products, and more accessible shelving and checkout lines.
• State-of-the-art technology, including Walgreens Web Pickup service, which allows customers to shop online and pick up orders in store, as well as self-serve touch screen kiosks that enable pharmacy patients to quickly refill prescriptions.

“Walgreens has a long-standing history of innovating to meet the evolving needs of our customers, which is why we’ve taken an approach to move beyond the traditional drugstore format and deliver a differentiated shopping and pharmacy experience based on what consumers have told us,” said Colin Watts, chief innovation officer at Walgreens, in a statement. “These new stores improve the design, convenience and quality of our pharmacy services, more effectively utilize space, and fully leverage the expertise of our highly-trained pharmacy staff to help deliver an experience that reflects our capabilities and commitment to cost effective health care.”

Attendees at the conference were also able to experience first-hand the ways in which Walgreens is leveraging technology to develop new and different ways for patients to manage their health. Interactive demonstrations of mobile applications for iPhone, iPod, Android, and Blackberry devices were offered at the Walgreens booth, including Refill by Scan, a feature that allows patients to scan the barcode of a prescription and order refills in seconds. Attendees were also able learn about Walgreens refill reminder text alerts, a new service which notifies patients when a prescription is due for refill.

“People value choice, control and convenience, and the online and mobile channels are great ways to deliver health care tools and information to our customers," said Sona Chawla, Walgreens president of e-commerce. "These applications have been widely adopted in helping people manage their health 24/7, wherever they are."