Canadian pharmacy adds personalized supplementation consultation service
The pharmacy firm, called Mednow Inc., calls its new service Total Health by Mednow. The goal of the service is to match consumers with products that best match their needs while cutting through what it calls “consumer confusion about supplements.”
All of the products offered through the program will be Health Canada approved and third party tested, the company said. Brands represented in the formulary include Genestra, Douglas Labs, Pure Encapsulations, NFH, and Designs for Health.
Consumers can book a 15 minute chat with a nutritionist through the company’s website. A quiz identifies consumers’ goals, health conditions and medications. In the case of medications, the company says ti will contact the consumer’s pharmacy to verify the medications being taken to ensure that supplement recommendations won’t conflict with these.
Too many products, too little guidance
The company said 27% of Canadians have increased their supplement used during the pandemic. With more than 1,000 new products coming onto the market annually, and with tens of thousands more already available, the company’s head supplement expert and chief nutritionist Winsome Dewar said the chance for confusion, duplication and mistakes is obvious.
“We feel there is a real need for more expert guidance, something that typically costs hundreds of dollars or more, but is free through Mednow’s Total Health offering,” Dewar said.
“There appears to be a lot of supplement confusion out there. Due to COVID, people are taking even more supplements than ever but significant improvements in key areas like sleep, stress, immunity, and energy only occur when they’re of the highest quality to ensure absorption, and they’re taken correctly and consistently4. In our opinion, far too often consumer purchasing decisions are fueled by fads over facts, and people may be taking supplements that are expired, low quality, aren’t right for them and in some cases, may be harmful,” she added.
Technology play
Mednow bills itself primarily as a healthcare technology company that is seeking to transform the pharmacy and supplement sectors with virtual access combined with telemedicine services. The service includes free at-home delivery of medications, a user-friendly interface for easy upload, transfer, and refill of prescriptions ad access to healthcare professionals through a chat function.
Mednow, which is still in a development and acquisition phase, generated about $450,000 in revenue for its most recent quarter. The company’s CEO Karim Nassar said he expect teh company, which began in British Columbia, to achieve full Canadian market penetration by the middle of 2022.
