Program design
Company Profile.
[Revised July 14]
RxOne was originally written by Lockie Computing (the NZ division of Parklea Software Ltd), which became 'HealthSoft Ltd' in Oct 1999.
'HealthSoft computing' contact numbers etc.
Phone; NZ (09) 300-7007
Fax; NZ (09) 373-4333
E-Mail; HEALTHSOFT.CO.NZ
Internet WWW.HEALTHSOFT.CO.NZ
Postal address; P.O.Box 37-831, Parnell, Auckland, NZ
Street address; 16 Heather St, Parnell Rise, Auckland, NZ.
History
HealthSoft and its associated companies began selling pharmacy computer programs in NZ 1983 and Australia in 1984, initially on proprietary systems and later MS-DOS.
The company entered the UK pharmacy market in 1991, and within five years had become the largest supplier of PoS systems to independent British pharmacies.
By 1994 there were 2000 pharmacies using its DOS programs, QuickScript and Checkout, across NZ, Australia and Britain.
The Pharmacy program project for Windows was started in May 1994, and a programming team, assisted by in-house pharmacists, has worked on it continuously since then.
The first Pharmacy program dispensary module Beta site was installed in October 1995, and released for general use in June 1996, with the Pharmacy program PoS module following in 1997.
Program design
The RxOne design drew on the company's experience of supporting several thousand users under DOS, and a decade of user feedback and ideas. Considerable emphasis went into building an Industrial Strength package to allow for the isolated nature of some pharmacies, the expectation that operators would be 'pharmacy knowledgeable' but usually not 'computer knowledgeable', and the mission critical nature of the application. Whenever possible, DOS actions were built in under the Windows actions so that a DOS-familiar operator would find transition easy.
Future
Design of enhancements and new features is influenced by;
- User Priority list
- Original ideas generated 'in house',
- Changes in pharmacy practice,
- Requests from the Distributors of HealthSoft software in various countries.
The development team is a permanent part of the company, and it is expected that the team will work continuously on improving the program throughout its life.
Company profile (As at July 04)
The group of companies using HealthSoft derived software have offices in 15 locations across New Zealand, Australia and Europe, with approx 90 full time employees, approximately a third of whom are pharmacists.
Members of the group also have smaller numbers of pharmacy clients in another nine countries across the Pacific, Africa and Europe for a total of approx 3700 pharmacy users on software derived from HealthSoft products worldwide.
Growth has been entirely from users who chose to buy the company's products. There has been no growth by takeover of other companies.
There are three independent programming teams working from the Auckland, Melbourne and Preston (UK) programming offices with all having access to each the others expertise as required.
HealthSoft Ltd is owned by the working Directors; Carreen Lockie, (Marketing Manager), and pharmacists, Margie Peat (Manager), and Harvey Lockie (Development Manager).
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