Thank you for taking the time to download this app. We appreciate it.
Goal
The primary goal of this app is to provide you, at all times, with self-care health related decision making tools.
These are actionable tools you may need as you decide the best course for health related problems that may come your way.
What If?
Self-Care Medications
You are not feeling good. Perhaps you have a headache, feel like throwing up or your stomach is hurting really bad.
What if an app could:
- Make sure you are not looking at an emergency situation?
- Help you determine if you need to go to an urgent care clinic?
- Help you make a decision on what to do if you think you don't need to see a doctor?
- Determine what over the counter (OTC) measures will make you feel better?
- Have a pharmacist recommend an over the counter medication to help you right away?
- Tell you what to use over the counter if you are pregnant, have high blood pressure, diabetes and so on?
- Help you make a decision if your child has fever and the doctor's office is closed?
Compare OTC Medications
You need something for headache, allergy relief, constipation or heartburn. Here you are at the drug store aisle. So many things to choose from.
What if an app could...
- ...compare the different allergy relief medications side by side?
- compare cough syrups so you know what type to get for your cough?
- compare cold and flu medications so you don't waste your time and money choosing what will not help you?
- compare heartburn medications so you know which would work faster for you?
- compare all those probiotics on the shelf side by side. Now you know what you are buying.
- compare pain relievers-creams, patches, roll on and others. This way you will get the best value for your money?
Kids Medication Dosing
Your child is itching all over. Broke out in hives.
You remember you have benadryl at home. You have always used it for situations like this. Now, on reading the medication label to get the dose, it says for 6 years and above. Your child is 5 years 3 months.
What if an app could:
- Give the directions of children's over the counter medications based on the child's weight?
- Give medicine directions and doses because you threw away the box the medicine came in?
- Make sure you are giving the medication the right way?
- Record or save the name of the medication, date, time and dosing instructions should you need that information later at the doctor's office or ER?
- Tell you what to look out for after giving the child this medication?
Manufacturer's savings
You are at the pharmacy counter to pick up your medication and the cost is prohibitive because it is a brand name medication and no generic available.
Your insurance is passing the cost to you.
What if an app could:
- Tell you if there is a manufacturer savings program for that medication so you could save money? (80% of brand name drugs have a savings program at one point or another)
- Make it easy for you to use such a savings program or coupon with a no hassle 2 taps?
Nearest Health Clinic
You are very sick. You think you should go to the nearest urgent care clinic.
What about that toothache killing you. You need to find the nearest dentist to you.
What if an app could:
- Tell you the nearest urgent care clinic to you?
- Tell you the nearest dentist to you?
- Give you information such as opening hours, distance, user reviews so you can decide if it is a good place for you?
- Give you the estimated wait times so you can make a good decision on how to spend your time.
...And Now
If you've ever thought about the "What ifs" above and wanted an 'app for that', you just downloaded the app.
This app was designed and developed with a strong focus on these what ifs.
The Brains
This app is being developed and maintained by a team of actively practicing U.S registered pharmacists that work in your community as retail, community, consultant or clinical pharmacists.
Motivation
The community pharmacist is most likely the first member of the healthcare team you will come in contact with if, let's say, you have a cough.
The interaction you have with the pharmacist, a trusted member of your community, will set the tone for how you will approach a health problem.
One day a colleague and I noticed how people were bumping into each other in the cold and flu medicine aisle during one of the recent cold seasons-Looking, reading, getting confused over all the plethora of cold medications just on one shelf.
Each one will settle for one that may not be a good fit for them.
We wondered how nice it would be to have a pharmacist guiding these people so they can make the best decisions in choosing these medications.
Unfortunately, the current work flow for the retail pharmacist is outdated.
It is considered more profitable to have the pharmacist run the cash register to cut costs as an example.
The pharmacist may not be available to guide you towards making a good decision about your self-care over-the-counter medication needs.
With these "what if" questions in hand, we sought assistance from other pharmacists for the development of this app.
We hope you have fun using it as much as we did putting it together.
See what the project leaders of the different sections of this app may want to share with you using the tabbed links above and see how it may meet your healthcare needs.
Should you have any questions, don't hesistate to contact us.
Sincerely,
We've put together pharmacist's recommendations for over-the-counter (OTC) medications.
Why?
Self-care without a healthcare professional has been mostly a guessing game. It is dependent on your apt for medical knowledge, personal experience, recommendations from your family and friends, unreliable internet sources, symptom checkers that pull information from a data source which makes them bland and not actionable.
Take the best symptom checkers out there. You know your symptoms, what are you checking again. Little wonder when you put in headache and fever, the reply is cancer. How did that help you?
What Is This?
To start with, this is not another symptom checker. It is an efficient self-care healthcare decision making tool.
Should you go to the emergency room? Should you seek urgent care? Make a doctor's appointment or wait another day?
These are some of the questions that will cross your mind when the first symptom hits you. This is one of the many reasons this app is a must have.
How?
Written by Pharmacists from the ground up, simulating conversations we always have with our customers, first we rule out emergency room visit. Then do you need to seek urgent care? We rule that out. And if you do, we will tell you the nearest urgent care facility to you.
Not urgent. But do you need to make a doctor's appointment for this? This app will go through the possible causes of your symptoms in a step wise fashion. Giving you information to make that decision along the way. Our Pharmacists do this every day. What we did is put over 100 years of experience amongst us into this app.
Finally, not urgent? Don't need to see a doctor? The app will send you to an article on what is available over-the-counter written by a Pharmacist. These articles are dynamic, customized to your needs and reviewed constantly to make it relevant and actionable by you.
You
- ...You can now eliminate problems that lead to incorrect self-diagnosis.
- ...You now have a systematic tool to screen for illnesses.
- ...You no longer have to rely on past personal, family, friends, and co-workers experiences to make a decision.
- ...You no longer have to delay the real cause of a problem which can lead to bigger problems before you see a doctor.
- ...You can now take care of that stomachache, diarrhea, fever, nausea in an efficient and cost saving manner.
- ...You now know what to do when your child has fever, runnynose or stuffy nose.
- ...You now know what to take over-the-counter for that ailment because you have a pharmacist (actually many pharmacists) in your pocket.
Take A Look
Take a look at the adult recommendations or children's over-the-counter recommendations part of this app and see what is in it for you.
Remember, we are still working hard for you. Day and night.
You can compare cold and flu, allergy, laxatives, heartburn medications or other OTC medicines.
What we did
We did put together a simple, easy to use app to compare most over-the-counter medications side by side.
Would you like to compare probiotics? Or perhaps want to compare medications for a yeast infection available over the counter.
What about comparing those heartburn medications? Or even energy drinks side by side?
No more standing at the aisle reading from one drug label to another trying to figure out the differences. Our Pharmacists have done that work for you.
Advantages
- Compare active ingredients side by side.
- Compare inactive ingredients alongside one another
- Search for active or inactive ingredients in a group of medications.
- Know which medicine will work faster, better or longer in a class.
- Compare doses, strengths, side effects of OTC medicines side by side.
- Our Pharmacists have analysed the Pros and Cons of each for you.
- Labels hard to read? We have read them for you.
- User votes, average costs, FYI are just a few things to compare side by side.
Be sure to use it often and get good value for your self-care over-the-counter medicines.
This app will give the dose of a child's over-the-counter medication based on his or her weight.
Purpose
Ever wanted to give your child an over-the-counter medication and the label says: "Under 6 years consult your doctor."
You take a look at your child and he or she is 5 yrs and a few months as if it is his or her fault.
What should you do? Should you give a 6 year old dose? A lower dose? Or why should my child not take it if a 6 year old kid can take it? Afterall he or she is just as big as a 6 year old.
Then you walk over to the Pharmacist. He or she simply read what the box said about not using the medication if under 6 years old back to you. As if you didn't read it before. Then tells you to call your doctor.
I hated doing that to people. Not anymore. You don't even need me anymore.
All you need is the weight of your child.
Features
- Simple, easy to use weight based dosing system.
- Eliminates dosing errors.
- Eliminates over or underdosing.
- Prevents inappropriate medicine use.
- Ability to save dose for future reference.
- Dose calculations to the 'ml'.
- Side effects warnings.
- No more dose guessing.
- No more looking for the drug package.
- No more struggling to peel that "peel here for directions" label.
If you are deciding whether or not to keep this app, and you are a parent, keep it because of this feature of the app. You will need it. Trust me.
We are not talking about just weight based dosing for Tylenol or Motrin. This app will give you the dose by weight of at least 90% of the children's medications available over-the-counter.
80% of brand name drug manufacturers have a savings program at one time or another.
Purpose
As a retail pharmacist, I hate it when a customer brings in an internet coupon that claims to be a savings coupon.
Save 80% off your Vyvanse prescription. It would proclaim. We know that is not true. But try explaining that to the customer. Not only does it waste my time, it also wastes the customer's time and makes everybody angry.
These guys just want to make money without thinking of the people it is hurting. Let me tell you how it works. When a pharmacy process the coupon, it counts as a transaction and they get paid. But there was no 80% off. Making the customer angry and wasting the Pharmacist's time.
So, you bet I was very happy when the team building this app agreed to include drug manufacturers coupons as part of the app even if it is not related to over-the-counter medications.
Features
Here are some of the useful features of this part of the app:
- Direct link to online drug manufacturer's coupon site.
- Easy 2 tap feature to tell you if there is a coupon or not.
- Easy 2 tap feature taking you to manufacturer's coupon site.
- Efficient and time saving.
- Your doctor can see if there is a manufacturer's coupon before writing that prescription for a brand name drug.
- You can check if there is a manufacturer's coupon before you pay that high drug price because there is no generic.
- Maintained by retail pharmacists around the clock.
- Finally! No more wasting the time of the Pharmacist or your time. You can save money easily.
We are seeking sponsorship of this app or any part of the app.
Why?
I wouldn't say we are seeking sponsorship to keep this app free, either way it is going to be free. This is a passionate project for us.
I would state however, the reasons why we are seeking sponsors.
Many times people ask others for financial help or otherwise and don't say what they are going to do with the help. Here are a few reasons why we need your sponsorship.
Self-care is an integral part of our healthcare system. Unfortunately, it is also the most neglected part. Even the FDA does not regulate most of the medications used for self-care. Leaving it out to the manufacturers. We have to depend on a manufacturer's reputation before buying that vitamin for instance. Who knows if that vitamin B6 is 100 mg? Well, the manufacturer said so.
Here are a few stats to ponder. According to the "Statistics on OTC use" by the consumer healthcare products association:
- Americans make 2.9 billion retail trips annually to purchase OTC products.
- 81% of adults use OTC medicines as a first response to minor ailments.
- U.S. consumers make 26 trips a year to purchase OTC products. They only visit doctors, on average, three times a year.
- Seven in 10 parents have given their child an OTC medicine late at night to help treat a sudden medical symptom.
- Consumers and taxpayers could save $5.2 billion annually if half of the unnecessary visits to primary care physicians were avoided by more self-care, including greater use of OTC medicines.
Those are a few of the hard facts on self-care and the use of over-the-counter medicines.
What are we doing?
- We are dedicated to making self-care healthcare more efficient for the 2.9 billion retail trips Americans make annually to purchase OTC products.
- Making self-care results oriented and actionable for the consumer.
- Providing consumers of self-care healthcare products with decision making tools to help determine the best course for health related challenges they may encounter.
- Providing self-care healthcare consumers with efficient, tangible, cost saving resources that solves real-world healthcare problems.
- Increased reliance on the use of apps as a problem solving tool presents great opportunity for self-care healthcare.
- 86 percent of U.S. adults believe responsible OTC medicine use helps lower healthcare costs for people like them. We provide that measure for responsibility.
I invite you to visit http://www.selfcare-otc.com/business_model.php (tablet, laptop or desktop preferred) to see what our business model is about and if you would like to join us in making self-care easier and more efficient for all Americans.
Ads should be about connecting with quality consumers. We make that happen.
Why with us?
As Pharmacists we know our users better than anyone, and we interact with them everyday in our retail practice.
Here is a good opportunity to use the power of a Pharmacist's recommendation to your advantage. In a recent study, 95% of consumers said they would buy what a Pharmacist recommends over-the-counter.
When you advertise with us, we become part of your marketing campaign and not just a forum to advertise your products and hope our users come across it. Our pharmacist helps to professionally market your product.
Here Is How.
We have almost 1000 ad spots in this app. But you won't see them and won't even know about them until a pharmacist introduces the ad to you during the interactive process. We call this admarketing.
This a unique ad serving method whereby the pharmacist markets your ad during the course of a conversation with a user.
Using first name for instance, a user looking for how to take care of allergy symptoms would see an interaction like this:
"Mike, Flonase has a $2 savings going on. Check out their ad by tapping here for more information".
When the user taps here, the ad will be displayed to the user. The user can interact with the ad using other options like call now, learn more or even save the ad for later interaction. You can't beat this.
Why this way?
We value our users. You do too, that is why you want to capture their attention.
In-your-face ads can be a serious nuisance and, frankly, a little insulting for someone with a headache. It is important you and I respect the user's personal space.
So how can you get an effective ad to a consumer when they are so invested in ignoring you?
One way you can do this is by delivering a valuable, insightful experience and keeping it interactive and fun. By making it interactive, you can engage 'with' the user rather than advertising 'at' the user.
Take a look at this ad example and see what I am talking about by tapping here.
What's in it for you?
Whether you are a newly opened Dental office, a Doctor's office, an Urgent Care Clinic, a New Product launcher, Looking to create product awareness, a Big Pharma, an Ad Agency or an Organisation, our ad system is designed for you.
Here are a few highlights of what's in it for you. Be sure to check out more at www.selfcare-otc.com/advertising for more details on advertising with us.
But before then, here is another ad example we think you will love. Tap here to take a look.
Now, let's see what is in it for your product, practice or business.
- Our users are looking to solve a healthcare problem by using our app. We integrate your product as part of the solution and an effective tool they should consider.
- Your ad is harmonized with the delivery context to meet the quality criteria of the pharmacist providing a harmonized user experience.
- We make your ad relevant to our users. What turns people off ads in mobile devices are usually ads that are not relevant to the actions they are taking at the time of using the device.
- Use our pharmacists to improve your ad relevance and drive qualified clicks.
- We mimic our conversation with customers in our retail practice when recommending an over-the-counter medication for instance or telling them to go to the nearest dentist or urgent care clinic.
- According to google, 70% of mobile searchers have used click to call to connect with a business directly from the search engine results page. We can incorporate this in your ad and even encourage the user to call you. For instance to check if you are open, business hours, schedule appointment, of if urgent care, your wait times or if a pharmacy, inventory.
- Here is a typical pharmacist intro to a localized or zip code level dental ad:
"Delk dental is a great place to check out. Tap here to see their ad. Ask for Jane should you decide to visit them."
This simple pharmacist intro accomplished a lot of things. First it introduced the ad, told our users it is an ad, so they won't be deceived, told them what to do should it fit in their plan, and personalized the ad for you the advertiser by giving them a contact name.
According to eMarketer, 35% of users do not trust banner ads at all. It is far worse with mobile ads. Estimates are up to 70%. We improve the trust factor in your ad, making it more useful to our audience.
Be sure to find out how we can help and see what ad inventory will fit your needs by visiting www.selfcare-otc.com/advertising on your laptop or desktop.
Please support our efforts by using the "Buy Now" buttons.
We feature "Buy Now" buttons or links on products our Pharmacists recommends that may be hard to find or will be cheaper if you buy from Amazon or other stores we decide to affiliate with for instance.
As an Amazon affiliate, we do get a 4 to 6% commission from the profit amazon makes if you buy from them. Note the word profit however, not sales price.
To be fair, in our comparison table for instance, we try to compare the retail store price with the current price at Amazon. This way, you can decide if it is worth your wait for a free two day delivery.
An example, why spend more on a product if you don't need it right away, or perhaps, you want to buy that allergy medication in bulk to last you through the allergy season. Doing this at a retail store will significantly be at a higher price.
We thought it would be a good idea to give you these options. So have fun.
We will love for you to be our friend and spread the word about this app.
Perhaps you find this app useful, perhaps you know someone who will find it useful, or just perhaps you are looking for something to share, talk about in your blog, post on facebook, plus one on google or even tweet about.
You will be supporting us greatly if you spread the word about this app. If you think we did a good job, why keep it to yourself? Why not tell others about it?
A co-worker who is coming down with a cold, a family member who has young kids that you think will benefit from our dosing by weight app, or your friend who is thinking of buying a probiotic but still researching what to get. These are opportunities to tell them about this app.
We have made it easy for you by including social network buttons below.
Please read the terms of using this app last updated March 22, 2016. It is user friendly.
Terms and Conditions
This App is for Informational Purposes Only and Does Not Provide Medical Advice.
Please read this privacy policy and be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose your information.
Updated March 22, 2016
Privacy Policy
This App is for Informational Purposes Only and Does Not Provide Medical Advice.
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