Nagomi Pharmacy has provided holistic, high-quality care to its customers in Tokyo since 2007. It’s a realization of founder Hikaru Watanabe’s vision for a beautiful, welcoming space where people could access personalised care, comfortably ask questions, and most importantly — feel genuinely supported.

“As a child, I remember watching my parents run their ramen shop in Tokyo,” says Watanabe. “They were on their feet all day and work was tough on their bodies. I thought that maybe if I studied medicine, I could help them and people like them in some way. This is what inspired me to work in healthcare.”

For Nagomi Pharmacy to become a lasting pillar of the community, his pharmacists needed to have the time to connect with their customers — which meant streamlining operations and reducing time spent on administrative tasks. To support his goal, he used Apple technology to create a digitized inventory and order management system for his employees.

Without a viable off-the-shelf solution, Watanabe took it upon himself to build his own. Using FileMaker Pro on Mac, he made a custom digital system that offers a centralized place for staff to manage complex inventories of prescription drugs. The system ensures that all three Nagomi Pharmacy locations are well-stocked, meeting customer needs, and able to predict future orders. This also reduces the amount of expired medications, helping the pharmacy’s bottom line.

To further increase productivity and create a great user experience for his employees, Watanabe implemented iPad for pharmacists to fill prescriptions and update reports in real time — saving them hours of paperwork at the end of the day. To take full advantage of iPad, Watanabe built the Nagomi INDEX iPadOS app so that pharmacists can search through hundreds of medications and quickly locate them on the shelf, as well as access patient information from the shop floor. This also makes the onboarding process easier for new pharmacists, who are able to learn quickly and find everything they need in one place.

“Our pharmacists are essential to patient care. By reducing administrative tasks with iPad, we prevent burnout and retain top talent that benefits both our patients and our business,” says Watanabe.

To improve the customer experience and make the pharmacy more approachable, Watanabe also created an iOS app called Medical Pay, using Xcode on Mac, that enables customers to communicate directly with pharmacists, submit prescriptions, and make payments from anywhere. Patients can even use it to securely speak with their pharmacist over built-in messaging feature if they want more information about their medication.

Because iPad allows them to collect and share information on location, Nagomi’s staff members can easily make house calls to patients across the city. With iPad, pharmacists access comprehensive health information and everything they need to accurately and securely make decisions on the go — resulting in better and more personalised patient care.