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As Labour pushes forward its 10 Year Plan, promises of AI-driven admin, a Single Patient Record and a revamped NHS App offer big potential for pharmacy. But will NHS red tape, underinvestment and patchy interoperability hold the sector back? By Saša Janković 

Labour’s ‘analogue to digital’ mindset shift for the NHS is nothing new, but its 10 Year Plan goes some way to fleshing out the current strategy, including freeing the front line from bureaucracy, partly through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make admin less burdensome; innovations to the NHS App, including prescription tracking; and a Single Patient Record to avoid appointments where the clinician does not know what happened at the previous one. But how will this digital shift play out in the sector over the next few years?

Paddy Gompels, managing director at Gompels Pharmacy in Melksham, says he’s optimistic about where digital is heading in community pharmacy. 

“It’s great to see and hear topics like AI becoming less of a taboo and more of an opportunity for transformation,” he says. “Tools like the NHS App’s pharmacy finder and the idea of a Single Patient Record are solid steps toward making things smoother for patients and pharmacists alike.”

Indeed, the Gompels group has long been an early adopter of technology solutions in its pharmacies, and in April this year rolled out its own Argos-style barcode system for prescription collection at its pharmacy at Spa Medical Centre. 

The first of its kind in the country, the new system sends patients with a smartphone a text message with a QR code when their prescription is ready to collect. When they get to the pharmacy they scan the QR code at a screen in the waiting area, alerting the pharmacist to bring out their prescription.

“We hope our system will be taken up by other pharmacies,” adds Gompels, who says his future plans include using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to automate repetitive tasks; bringing in AI wherever possible, such as for clinical checks and recording meetings; and building more dashboards to track key pharmacy metrics and “keep us on top of things”.

Nonetheless, he says he’s still “worried it’s all moving too slowly” and that even though private providers are ahead of the game, they get bogged down by NHS red tape. “Take Pharmacy First. At go-live only a handful of (arguably sub-standard) systems could actually handle it properly,” he says. “When certain IT providers have a monopoly, it kills the drive to innovate and stops us from picking the best tools out there.” 

Vision versus reality

Tariq Muhammad, chief executive of Invatech Health – home of the Titan PMR system and Titan.X AI – is similarly critical of the start of Pharmacy First, calling it a “clunky model” with a “disparity between vision and reality”.

“When Pharmacy First was announced in 2023, it promised £600m of new monies coming into pharmacy and the opportunity to reduce the 8am GP rush,” says Muhammad. 

“However, what we have learnt with the NHS is there is a big gap between their vision and their delivery, especially where it concerns pharmacy services. Wind on two years, and Pharmacy First has had low uptake, less than half of the funds have been spent, technology providers are still waiting to be accredited, and pharmacy businesses have largely been put off the whole thing.”

Muhammad predicts: “Like all the previous plans, the government’s 10 Year Plan makes the right noises about what should happen and what a future healthcare system should look like, but saying words like AI, Single Patient Record and NHS App won’t make it more successful.”

His suggestion is that the pharmacy sector takes control of its own destiny. “Since the advent of independent prescribing, pharmacists have the capability to provide a vast range of private services direct to patients,” he says. “As the NHS struggles to meet patient demand, if we empower pharmacists with AI, apps and technology we can ensure these services are efficient and the patient gets the best possible outcomes.”

Digital touchpoint 

Tracey Robertson, managing director at Cegedim Rx, agrees that digital connectivity with patients is “super important”, and believes that community pharmacy could become the most accessible digital touchpoint in primary care, supporting patients in accessing their medicines, receiving care reminders and tailored health interventions via digital channels”.

“Over the next few years, I’d love to see pharmacies really move from being analogue dispensers to true digital health hubs, connecting patients, their records, and clinical services in real time” she says. Robertson predicts that AI-driven tools will begin to automate many of the routine, low-value administrative tasks, from repeat prescription processing through to basic triage and patient communications, which will help to free up pharmacists and their teams so they can focus more on direct patient care and delivering new clinical services.

In the meantime, Robertson says integration with the NHS App and a Single Patient Record will finally allow pharmacists to see the full picture and avoid duplication, making their lives easier and ultimately helping to provide far more joined-up and enhanced patient care.

System commitment

While the benefits for patients are clear, the continued switch to digital continues to create headaches for contractors.

“There is already a rich mix of technology solutions for community pharmacies to choose from, and I see that continuing,” says Mark Pedder, commercial director at HubRx. “For community pharmacies, it is a real commitment to jump into one supplier’s ecosystem over another.” 

The reason for this, explains Pedder, is that currently almost none of these systems are interoperable. “That means branch staff often need to log into dozens of standalone platforms to manage dispensing, NHS clinical services, private clinical services, BSA claiming, NBS, vaccinations, travel health and IP pilots – which is unsustainable,” he says. “Although I think there will be an increase in interoperability and coming together of some system providers.”

Someone who knows the technicalities – and hurdles – behind a move to digital is Dr Indra Joshi. She founded and led the NHS AI Lab, securing a £250 million investment and overseeing the development and deployment of more than 100 AI technologies into the NHS health and care system, as well as playing a key role in shaping ethical AI regulations and governance frameworks to ensure patient safety.

Now director of strategic engagement at Optum NHS (formally EMIS), she says: “The ‘left shift’ of moving healthcare from hospitals and into the community is reliant on allied healthcare teams, pharmacies, dentists, opticians and, all the NHS being empowered and supported by digital systems and data insights. How suppliers help enable data insights to pharmacies will be critical in helping realise some of these ambitions.”

Joshi believes there is potential for more to be done within the pharmacy setting to allow patients to be managed more holistically, and data and AI could be the key enabler. “People often visit their pharmacy for a number of reasons so being able to connect some of those data insights to suggest what other tools and services might be helpful is part of the digital shift within community pharmacy,” she says.

“For example, if someone asks for help with weight management there could be digital therapeutics or other data driven tools that could help. There’s also potential to help patients – particularly those with complex and chronic conditions – better understand the impact of medication and treatment through tracking apps collecting insights on medicine or treatment response, use and symptoms.” 

Stakeholder responsibilities

Contractors may well be ready, and system suppliers sound willing to do what it takes to optimise interoperability, but is there more that politicians and other stakeholders need to do to deliver on Labour’s digital shift?

There’s a real opportunity to educate patients about what care can now be delivered to them by their neighbourhood teams, says Joshi. “Campaigns are therefore critical for the digital shift, but the responsibility of educating patients can’t rely on pharmacy and the NHS; it needs to be something all stakeholders take ownership of,” she says. 

She is also adamant that improving the digital maturity of the sector will be key, adding: “If pharmacists are going to have access to, and the ability to edit, patient electronic health records, it is crucial that they have adequate technology infrastructure with appropriate privacy and security safeguards, and that pharmacy personnel are supported and upskilled for this.” 

Robertson agrees that consistent investment in the digital infrastructure of community pharmacy is fundamental, noting that “innovation has too often been hampered by fragmented systems and short-term funding”. 

As a result, she calls for “a commitment to properly resource, interoperable IT across the NHS and community pharmacy”, which will be essential if the Single Patient Record is to become a reality. She stresses that collaboration is key. “Policymakers, NHS bodies, technology providers and pharmacy leaders must work in together in partnership to co-design solutions that work for both patients and pharmacy professionals,” she says. “Engagement with frontline teams is critical, as adoption will only succeed if digital tools genuinely reduce burden, rather than add to it.”

Having worked in and around digital health for a long time, Pedder says the future has to be based on published, attainable NHS interoperability standards that all providers then work to and develop solutions, stressing that making this low cost for suppliers and pharmacies alike is imperative. 

“The starting point for this is with the NHS App for patients and interoperability between, for example, the national booking service for seasonal vaccinations and community pharmacies’ own appointment booking systems,” he maintains. 

However, Pedder is keen to emphasise that the NHS has to resource the teams to enable those developments to be approved and accredited in quick time to make for a vibrant market, adding that: “This really hasn’t been the case over the last 10 years.”

Resource gap

He’s not alone in highlighting a resource gap. As ever, the promise of the benefits of technological innovation ends up chasing its tail back to the sticking point of funding – a position which Tariq Muhammad feels the sector is being left to wade through on its own. 

“Pharmacy representative bodies are helpless when it comes to negotiating pharmacy’s position,” he says. “Pharmacy’s best negotiating strategy is to demonstrate to the government that it can survive providing private healthcare services outside the NHS.”

Gompels says politicians and stakeholders need to “pull out all the stops to clear the path for innovation”, which includes properly funding pharmacy and associated services. “It’s crazy that something like the IP Pathfinder needs six or seven different systems (Cleo, GP Connect, PMR, MS Form, Booking system, PharmOutcomes) to complete a single patient service,” he says. “Let pharmacies choose the best IT systems by encouraging competition, not locking us into one provider, and fund decent, joined-up tech from the start.”