Intercom Plus

IntercomPlus is the Walgreen Company's proprietary pharmacy computer system. It was founded as Intercom in 1981, and was the first large scale retail pharmacy computer system [1]. It relies on VSAT satellite access and/or broadband connections to link the over 8,000 Walgreens retail, mail service, and specialty pharmacies. Through its usage, Intercom made Walgreens the largest private user of satellite transmission data in the world, second only to the U.S. Government [2]. The design of the system enables seamless store-to-store prescription filling, making filling a refill at a location other than where it was filled originally essentially no different from filling it again at the original location.

IC+ is written in Team Developer, from Unify (formerly Centura), and comprises the following applications:

Intercom Plus is consistently being improved for maximum accuracy and performance.

This application is the core of IC+. Paper prescriptions are scanned so that the image can be retained electronically (a program called Walgreens VISION). The scanned image can then be sent to other Walgreens locations through DWB (Dynamic Workload Balancing) or POWER (Pharmacy Optimization Within Enterprise Re-Engineering) for various purposes (data entry or data review). The paper prescription is kept on file per local or state laws. In certain states, the computerized image serves as the legal copy of the prescription and the original paper hard copy becomes the Third Party Audit Record (3PAR).

After the patient, drug, and prescriber information has been entered (often by a technician or pharmacy intern), the prescription is double checked (by a registered pharmacist) to ensure the information was entered accurately. Intercom Plus's Automatic Label Printing System (ALPS) program generates a leaflet for the prescription. The technician then scans the leaflet on a Check-weigh Scale and the system generates a vial label for the prescription after the system performs a National Drug Code (NDC) validation via scanner. The vial label is placed appropriately sized container for the prescription. The system automatically checks the patient's current medication list for any potential drug interactions via Drug Utilization Reviews (DUR).

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