But simply setting up shop and selling drugs online, in Boehm's estimation, is merely Phase One. Smart refill reminders that compel patients to re-order their drugs. Deep content about medications, their benefits, their side effects, and potential alternative drugs. But she said the physicians with whom she has spoken haven't griped about the idea, largely because they know that pharmacists, too, are well trained in medicine. It's not like the pharmacist is sending them to Joe Schmoe's Random Online Support Group.
Pharmacists are also medical professionals with their own ethics and licenses to worry about.
So these are going to be legitimate resources that they're pointing to. Already there have been many concerns expressed about insurance companies tracking users' online habits to see what medical sites they are visiting, in order to determine benefits and make other key decisions. In the case that Boehm described, a lot of private medical information would be turned over to insurers voluntarily by patients. It's not data that's going to be used for targeted marketing, necessarily. There will be some cross-selling of information collected, she acknowledged, but said that that data will be in anonymously.