No budtenders here: How Insalata Cannabis is building its business on pharmacists' recommendations

Customers who dropped in over the Aug. 26 weekend for the opening of a new Insalata Cannabis Market in Waterloo, Ont., might have started their visit with an Insalata cannabis educator—there are no 'budtenders' here—and ended with a product and regimen recommendation from a pharmacist working next door, at Wholehealth Pharmacy Partners. That’s exactly what Insalata and Wholehealth want to see. “Unlike other cannabis stores that focus on the 19- to 24-year-old market whose motivation for cannabis usage is more recreational and about having a good time with friends, we wanted to take a different approach and service those customers who are thinking about cannabis for health and wellness,” Insalata CEO Christian Guay told Pharmacy Practice + Business. “So we created this ecosystem with Wholehealth Pharmacy to give customers access to a healthcare professional who can give them a well-informed recommendation,” he added. “And because Wholehealth is just next door, in some cases we’ve walked a customer to the pharmacy for a consultation and afterward the pharmacist sends the customer back to Insalata with a recommendation.” Read: Extensive online program delves into all things cannabis Insalata’s Waterloo location is the third in a growing network of stores, with each store built next to a Wholehealth Pharmacy. The first store opened last March in Welland, Ont., followed about four months later by a second site in Thunderbay, Ont. More stores are in the works, including three slated for Toronto alongside three new Wholehealth stores that are still to be built. Insalata plans to have up to 25 locations throughout Ontario by the end of next year, said Guay. For pharmacies that choose to enter a relationship with Insalata, the benefits will include the addition of a new service into their practice, which will create a new, non-government-based revenue stream. None of the Insalata sites dispense medical cannabis, which requires a physician’s authorization and the patient registering with a licensed producer. But with the growing evidence supporting the health and wellness benefits of cannabis, more and more consumers are seeking cannabis products that can address health concerns ranging from chronic pain and insomnia to anxiety and menopause-related hot flashes. Read: Can I travel with my medical cannabis anywhere? This is where pharmacists can really help, said Anushya Vijayaraghevan, a pharmacist and pharmacy owner at Wholehealth who serves as head of cannabis research at Insalata. “A lot of times the customer has the product but no one is educating them,” she said. “Even when they have an authorization from a doctor for a certain amount of cannabis over a certain period, they often don’t know which product will work best for them and what titration protocol to follow. There’s a whole gap in the system when it comes to cannabis use for health reasons—that’s where we come in.” Through Apothecare Inc., an education company co-founded by Vijayaraghevan, pharmacists interested in helping patients understand how the various cannabis products might address their health concerns can sign up for an online cannabis care program, which is delivered in seven modules covering subjects such as cannabis essentials, common indications for cannabis therapy, and cannabis-based pharmacogenetic testing. The last module presents clinical guides designed to help pharmacists integrate cannabis assessment into their practice. Read: Health Canada report suggests pharmacies could sell CBD “When cannabis was legalized in Canada in 2018, pharmacists were given baseline knowledge but about 80% of the (educational) module we received at the time were more legislative material,” recalled Vijayaraghevan. “We were not given tools to help us understand how we were going to assess a patient for potential cannabis therapy from beginning to end, and what we would recommend to the patient.” With Insalata next door, pharmacists trained in cannabis assessment will have more opportunities to provide evidence-based guidance on the use of cannabis for health and wellness, said Guay. “The model we’ve created is a bit disruptive,” he said. “It’s very consumer-friendly and it’s meant to essentially combine the ease of accessing a wide variety of cannabis products in a retail setting with the expertise of a medical professional who can recommend the best product for a customer’s health concern.” Read: 3 years after legalization, we have shockingly little information about how it changed cannabis use and health harms

No budtenders here: How Insalata Cannabis is building its business on pharmacists' recommendations

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