Benefits to the business and the customer

In the future, pharmacies will not just be places to collect medicines:

• They will have transformed into community hubs providing health care services to patients.
• Pharmacies could become the first port of call for support with long-term condition management and minor ailments.
• Several operational, technological, and regulatory changes will need to happen to improve patients’ experience and support the expansion of the pharmacy’s scope and this has already started with the changing of staff roles.
• By the end of the decade, pharmacies might no longer be the dispensing destinations they are today. Instead, they could become hubs for patient service, unleashing the full potential of pharmacists in primary care.
• Medication management could move online, with pharmacy apps reminding patients to take medicine and order repeat prescriptions. Automated dispensing hubs could make up prescriptions to be delivered directly to patients at home.
• Pharmacies and pharmacists have the potential to become the first port of call for primary care, with patients visiting pharmacies for support with long-term conditions through medication management, testing and holistic preventative health care, or resolving minor ailments.

On top of all the traditional roles the community pharmacy offered the customer / patient will benefit by:

• Less need for GP appointments
• Faster online and face to face consultations treating newly diagnosed ailments
• Long term health support with regular checks
• Managing and reordering prescriptions flexibly online 
• Easier access to enhanced services
• Improved patient safety
• Improved signposting
• Greater confidence in the pharmacy team

The pharmacy itself will benefit by:

• Upskilled, competent, happy, and motivated staff
• Increased financial revenue through services offered
• Further increased revenue with less wastage of stock
• Continuing with their core role as a key part of the medicines supply chain in purchasing and dispensing drugs, while broadening the range of contracted and funded activities they undertake.
• Pharmacy staff will be even more valued members of multidisciplinary primary care teams, working with others to improve the health of their local populations.

The website Kingsfund Community Pharmacy informs us that the pharmacy of the future will improve though four key areas.

• Developing relationships
• Working with patients and the public
• Understanding needs of the local area
• Evaluation and learning