Compounding gives your doctor and Heritage Drugs the means to customize medications. remedies and formulations specifically for you if your needs are unmet by conventional pharmaceutical products or by the way they are administered.

Pharmacy compounding dates back to the origins of pharmacy and was the prevalent form of medication preparation throughout the 1930s and 1940s. It's use declined in the 1960s and 1970s as en masse drug manufacturing capabilities improved. But because of the "as is" aspect of manufactured drugs, some patients have had to forego the benefits of the active agents because those patients are allergic to an added preservative or flavor.

Compounding enables a pharmacist to formulate a blend of the ingredients comprising the active agent without the offending preservatives or flavors.

Compounding is also used to provide alternative methods of medication ingestion. For instance, a child who needs cough medicine may be unwilling to take it in liquid form, but will take it in lollipop form.

Compounding pharmacists, of which there are approximately 3,000 in the United States, acquire special skills and equipment that enable them to work with patients and their patients' healthcare providers to develop unique solutions.

Compounding can be as simple as having pills crushed for you, having your child's favorite flavor added to a medication or as complex as having a customized formulation of ingredients made especially for you from scratch.