HubRx has announced details of its multi-million pound investment in a new automated pharmacy facility in Yorkshire.
It hopes to create 100 new jobs at the 40,000sq ft operation, which it says will be the UK’s first state-of-the-art centralised automated pharmacy for independent pharmacy contractors.
“For the first time ever, due to new legislation currently going through parliament, the UK’s 4,461 independents will be able to realise the time-saving benefits of automated dispensing and create a level playing field with the big multiple pharmacies already benefitting from this. We’re working closely with independent pharmacy owners to develop a unique ‘hub and spoke’ model ready for this,” explained CEO Daniel Lee, who also founded Pharmacy2U.
“In a post-COVID world, pharmacists will expect the significant clinical and advisory role they have played during this crisis to continue – and so will their patients. Our hub will give pharmacies the option to outsource up to 70% of their dispensing workload, freeing them up to expand their clinical service role in the community. It is designed to support the transformation of independents as they adapt to the new Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework – and ensure that the patient relationship remains with the local pharmacy.”
Lee is a qualified pharmacist and worked at his family’s independent pharmacy business in Leeds, before setting up Pharmacy2U. He stepped down last year to establish HubRx.
He will be working alongside Chairman, Sean Riddell, the former CEO of EMIS Group PLC, and non-executive director, Mike Hewitson, who sat on the National Pharmacy Association board for 8 years, and was a board member of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee for 3.
“A service like HubRx would have helped independent community pharmacy tremendously during this pandemic, and it will be badly needed long after the outbreak is over. The presence and reliability of local pharmacies has been vital for patients in these last few months. HubRx will help by filling prescriptions reliably and safely while releasing us to take on more of the clinical role we have been trained for,” he said.
Once up and running, pharmacies will be able to digitally send prescriptions to HubRx for automated dispensing and delivery to the community pharmacy for collection by the patient.
They believe that they will be able to dispense a million prescriptions every month.
The company has signed a commercial agreement with Clanwilliam Health which provides the RxWeb PMR system. This is the UK’s only web-based Patient Medical Record (PMR) system and is currently used by over 1800 pharmacies across the UK.
Clanwilliam Group’s CEO, Howard Beggs is also a non-executive director of HubRx.
