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An on-line initiative has been launched that encourages smokers to quit by quantifying exactly how smoking affects their lives.
The initiative can be accessed through the Irish interactive health site www.eirpharm.com. It is an interactive programme that enables smokers to calculate how much they spend annually on cigarettes and how much it affects their health. It also allows them to calculate the benefits of quitting, choose their most suitable nicotine replacement therapy, and receive tips on how to quit.
"We wanted to make the site as innovating and interesting as we possibly could. We didn't just want to re-hash medical information. Smokers we encountered were sick and tired of people lecturing them on the dangers of smoking, so we decided to set up an interactive way of allowing them make informed decisions themselves," Brendan Rochford, co-founder of Eirpharm.com told ElectricNews.Net.
During the Olympic Games in September 2000, Eirpharm included a 'Medicines in Sport' database on its site. This enabled users to enter the names of particular medicines and drugs into a database, which in turn determined whether or not the medicines could be used legally by athletes participating in the games.
The company aims to provide as much Irish based, original material on the site as possible.
"When we were setting up, we conducted research and focus groups, and discovered that people were put off by Americanised brand names and jargons found on other Irish health sites, so we tried to avoid that as much as possible," Rochford said.
Eirpharm.com was launched in August 2000, and was about two years in development. It was developed by Ennis pharmacist Brendan Rochford, Dr. Martin Rochford (Brendan's brother) and Dr. Audrey Kinehan. The site is privately funded by Rochford Pharmacy and University Pharmacy in Galway, although the company also expects to receive funding from the Ennis Information Town Project.
In the first month of its existence, Eirpharm received over 80,000 hits and the company says these figures continue to grow. The site also offers an on-line purchasing facility, where customers can buy health and beauty products. The sale of prescribed medicines on-line is illegal.
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