PMR

Sheffield pharmacy claims it is first to go fully paperless

Foxhill Pharmacy in Sheffield claims it has become the first pharmacy in the UK to go paperless, having switched to a cloud-based system.

Sheffield pharmacy claims it is first to go fully paperless

Foxhill Pharmacy in Sheffield claims it has become the first pharmacy in the UK to go paperless, having switched to a cloud-based system.

New PMR first to receive NHS accreditation in 10 years

Invatech Health's newly accredited Titan PMR is now available to pharmacies in England and Wales.

Regulations introduce SSPs into terms of service

Amendments to the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013 have been laid before Parliament

Insight: PMR systems not fit for purpose

My mobile phone network knows that unless it keeps me happy I can easily (well, quite easily) move to another network. The same cannot be said about PMR systems.

It is very difficult to move to another supplier – particularly when the big companies provide pretty much the same offering in terms of price, service and technology. I just don’t get any sense that they view pharmacies as customers, and they seem to have little interest in the way that our businesses are changing.

Unless we can find a way to change this dynamic, the gap between what our technology can do, and what we want it to do, will grow and grow. This could potentially be crippling to pharmacy businesses in an age when customers are increasingly chasing digital by default and struggle to engage with analog pharmacy systems.

Insight: Driving me mad

By Alexander Humphries*

Our main wholesaler has now missed four afternoon deliveries in a fortnight. Twenty per cent of our deliveries have failed to arrive as a result. Our business, like every other pharmacy, relies on a just-intime supply chain, meaning that when things go wrong it immediately causes us a problem. Work starts to back up and patients are kept waiting for their medicines.

When we complain to the driver, he tells us that the reason he misses us out is that his employer will not pay him overtime in order to complete his deliveries. This is unbelievable as we’re talking about a multi-billionpound organisation here, but it just shows, if true, how much contempt there is for us as customers.