LINE application in Pharmacy service, Thailand

Abstract

In January 2018, there were internet users about 57 million people in Thailand. Thai people had the most daily time spent using internet in the world and the most time spent using social media. LINE application was a social media that had the most monthly active users in Thailand. Nowadays LINE is the alternative communication channel in many organizations. As LINE can help a work conveniently and increase effectively communication in organizations. The purpose of this descriptive study was surveying the situation of using LINE in pharmacy service. A systematic review of published LINE-related research was conducted to study toward the use of LINE in pharmacy. The literature searches in Google scholar and Thai-Journal Citation Index were conducted between January 2014 and April 2018. The Boolean operator “AND” and ＂OR＂ were used to identify studies by keyword ＂LINE application＂ AND ＂Pharmacy service OR Pharmaceutical service＂ AND ＂Social media OR Social network＂ AND ＂Pharmacist＂. We considered articles published only in Thai language and those were original studies which conducted in pharmacist by sampling methods for inclusion. Titles and abstracts were screened, followed by full-text review. Two related articles were found. The study showed LINE was the most widely used social media in pharmacy service of the hospital and community pharmacists. They used LINE as the channel for drug information service, drug counseling, information searching and answer the questions toward medicines and health products. The pharmacists perceived LINE was the timely channel which is easy to use and had cost saving. They can communicate with multimedia such as voice call, image and video file by using internet via smartphone and it as the free application. Therefore LINE was easy access to the customer and connect to other network. So LINE was the beneficial channel in pharmacy service. The pharmacists should be supported using LINE in other pharmacy service appropriately.