Retailers are going a little iPad crazy (and we're not talking about selling the tablet devices). Recent reports have a wide variety of retailers, including Lowe's, Neiman Marcus and Sears, equipping sales associates with iPads to help improve performance in stores. The most recent chain to test the use of iPads in stores is Walgreens.
The drugstore chain, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report, has created a new full-time health guide position in 16 stores in Chicagoland.
"The concept is meant to create a pharmacy and health care 'help desk' where customers get solutions or referrals for their personal health questions," Colin Watts, Walgreens' chief innovation officer, told the Sun-Times.
Health guides are deployed in stores to help answer customers' questions and free up time for pharmacists to engage in more one-on-one consultations with people in stores.
According to the Sun-Times, Walgreens and other pharmacies are lobbying Congress for bigger reimbursements on insurance. To receive them, it will need to prove pharmacists are engaged in the medical care of its customers.