CVS has recently rebranded itself as CVS Health. It plans to open 600 new MinuteClinics over the next three years. Previously they just treated minor conditions. Now services are expanding to include preventative health (vaccinations, screenings and so on) as well as the management of chronic conditions.

Can Healthcare indeed learn from retail? Most probably not in the way, Jacob West suggests,

as the healthcare regulations and NHS requirements in the UK are certainly a different kettle of fish from what MinuteClinics and CVS are able to offer.

Yet, there are a number of deficits that are causing heavy costs troubling the UK healthcare system, and the recent spending spree of David Cameron will most probably not tackle. The issue lies -just to name one most trivial example- in arranging and keeping appointments. There is an incredibly high cost associated with appointments not kept, be it by way of negligence on the service-user’s side or shortcomings in the hospital or primary care services.

Scheduling alone wil not resolve the issue, but there are ways to tackle the problem. Roth and Partners have developed an approach that can help hospitals apply methods originating in retail which use cutting edge technologies combined with smart-data (an efficient data mining methodology for location based and movement data).

Be sure to find out about it, we will announce availability soon.