You probably do quite a bit of your shopping online these days, so when you’ve got some prescription medications to fill and you see that there are online stores that promise to ship your medication right to your door, it sounds like a pretty good deal, right?
Wrong. Online pharmacies are definitely one of the more dangerous digital stores out there today, and it actually has nothing to do with the security of your credit card number or personal health history:
- The FDA has a pretty hard time keeping track of online pharmacies, so it should come as no surprise that many medications sold online aren’t FDA approved at all. In other words, as a customer ordering from one of these websites, you have no reassurance that you’re getting the correct medication and that it doesn’t contain any harmful ingredients.
- Many of these online pharmacies send out the incorrect medications — either by accident or on purpose (to save money) — and when it comes to prescription drugs, it can be incredibly dangerous to consume something that hasn’t been approved by your doctor.
- And finally, interacting with a pharmacist “in real life” is something that should never be underrated. Especially if you take multiple medications, including prescription and/or over-the-counter drugs, it’s important that a licensed pharmacy technician is able to look the drugs and determine if any harmful interactions could occur.
Despite all of the convenience that online pharmacies seem to provide, they simply can’t offer the high-quality services that real-life pharmacies can offer. There have been so many developments in technology recently that even the smallest pharmacies can afford time-saving devices like retail pharmacy POS systems and self-service POS system checkout lines.
Learn more about this topic here.
