Here, in an affluent stretch on the north shore of Lac St. Louis, Mr. Simard and his partner Mrs. Nathalie Turgeon have built the pharmacy of their dreams.

"I would not have a big-store type of pharmacy," he remembers thinking after he sold his medical information website theheart.org. "I would have a pharmacy that would be small, a pharmacy where people feel at home, a pharmacy where I can talk to people and a pharmacy that optimized the use of technology.

"Not yet two months old, the pharmacy is already writing 80 prescriptions a day. Typically, Mr. Simard says, a start-up pharmacy writes about 100 prescriptions daily after more than two years.

One thing customers notice is that Mr. Simard and his staff of 4 can wander the pharmacy with lightweight laptop computers that transmit data wirelessly to a central computer.