Medicine Shoppe, the world's leading community pharmacy chain and a part of $ 75-billion health care major Cardinal Health group, will soon open its 100th outlet in India. Also, the company plans to launch the smart card facility for its customers. With its booming economy and the friendlier regulatory environment that is anticipated as the country opens up foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail industry, health care retail would experience an exponential growth in India, feels Medicine Shoppe Vice President and International Business Head, Bruce Burnett.

The company wants to take advantage of this situation as it views India along with China driving the growth outside the US and becoming the key markets in the future.

Medicine Shoppe India has recently launched a special loyalty card, Shoppe Select. This is a smart card where customer's medication details are stored on the chip. If a customer needs to access his/her medication history, all one has to do is enter it into any regular smart card reader and the history will pop up without any need for proprietary software. In future, the card will be configured to store even the medical records. This will be of immense convenience to old patients. Besides this, the card also acts as a loyalty card where a customer can collect points for spending money and redeem points at the Medicine Shoppe.

For example for every Rs 100 spend, customer gets 10 points. Over a period of time, the customer's points get added up and can redeem points for gifts. In all there are 21 points levels. At the highest purchase point levels customer can redeem for international holiday packages and a Hero Honda bike.

Recently, the Medicine Shoppe India has opened its first specialty pharmacy at Andheri (E), Mumbai, which is first of its kind in India. Specialty Pharmacy stocks medicines for cancer, organ transplant, HIV, hepatitis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, infertility, Cardiac Problems & other critical illnesses.

Besides selling most of the medicines through its ISO 9001:2000 certified pharmacies, Medicine Shoppe India offers lot of value added benefits and services to its customers. Every Medicine Shoppe store maintains patient's record. The company has tied-up with medicine companies to organize free check up camps for the customers for critical illness like diabetes, osteoporosis, BPH, which are expensive and offered only at select test labs. It provides free accidental insurance and "Mediclaim" policies as rewards to the loyal customers. The registered customers also get discounts at various hospitals, pathological labs and other health institutions.