Empowering private pharmacy services with intelligent technology

Written by Nicholas Batten, CTO and Co-founder of Nuumad
Published in the Scottish Pharmacy Magazine, Volume 17, Issue 3, 2025

As NHS funding pressures intensify, community pharmacies face a stark choice: diversify or decline. There is good news and it's not on the horizon, it’s here. Artificial intelligence (AI) isn't the job destroying force many fear. It's becoming the catalyst that enables pharmacies to expand services, increase revenue streams, and, in fact, create employment opportunities.

The transformation happening across forward thinking pharmacies challenges the tired narrative of AI replacing healthcare professionals. Instead, we're witnessing something far more interesting which is that technology is acting as a force multiplier, allowing pharmacies to deliver more consultations, serve more patients, and consequently require more staff to meet surging demand. It also enables teams to standardise workflows, reduce administrative friction, and maintain consistent quality across services, meaning patients benefit from faster, more reliable care while pharmacies grow sustainably. This balance of efficiency and human expertise is at the heart of the modern pharmacy revolution.

Streamlining to scale

The mechanics are straightforward. Modern consultation platforms streamline the entire patient journey, from pre consultation risk assessments sent to patients beforehand, through the consultation itself with integrated clinical guidance, to seamless follow ups. This eliminates the fumbling between systems, the searching for protocols, and the administrative friction that traditionally bogs down private healthcare delivery.

When pharmacists have everything they need in one intuitive workflow, i.e. the clinical cheat sheets, training resources, patient histories, and documentation, consultations become faster and more confident. Crucially, team members can be trained quickly and consistently, lowering the barrier to expanding a consultation offering across multiple staff members and locations.

This means that pharmacies can realistically increase their consultation capacity without proportionally increasing costs. Moreover, as private services become more accessible and efficiently delivered, demand accelerates. 

At Nuumad, we've observed pharmacies implementing streamlined consultation technology suddenly finding themselves space-constrained within months. They're fitting additional consultation rooms and recruiting healthcare professionals to meet demand they've created.

The diversification imperative

This matters profoundly in the current climate. With prescription margins squeezed and NHS funding unreliable, pharmacies cannot survive on dispensing alone. Private healthcare services such as travel vaccinations, weight management programmes, and minor ailment consultations represent vital revenue diversification and strengthen a pharmacy’s position as a community healthcare hub.

What has shifted is the feasibility of offering these services at scale. Modern digital platforms, supported by carefully applied AI enhancements or automation help standardise workflows, surface relevant clinical information, and make day to day operations more manageable, without replacing human judgment or taking decisions away from healthcare professionals. This practical support removes many of the barriers that once made new service lines slow or intimidating to introduce.

Traditionally, each new service brought its own set of forms, pathways, training requirements, and follow up tasks. Technology simplifies this, giving teams consistent templates, clear guidance, and audit ready documentation. The result is that pharmacies can expand confidently into service areas that previously felt too administratively burdensome.

Technology doesn’t diminish the pharmacist’s role, it amplifies it. By reducing friction and improving clarity, it allows clinicians to focus on patient care while building sustainable private service income, something that is now essential, not optional, for long term resilience.

The cybersecurity obligation

Yet as digital transformation accelerates, the responsibility to protect patient data is important not to ignore. The move towards integrated systems, AI supported decision making, and cloud based consultation platforms might expand capability, but can also increase risk. Pharmacies are custodians of some of the most sensitive information an individual can share - and that duty does not shrink in the digital era, it intensifies.

Robust cybersecurity is no longer a nice to have, It is a foundational requirement for operating a modern healthcare service. Platforms must meet stringent standards around data encryption, access controls, audit trails, and GDPR alignment. Pharmacy owners must ask not just what a system can do, but how it keeps data safe, who can access it, and what protections exist against breaches or misuse.

Compliance is about preserving trust - trust from regulators, yes, but more importantly from patients who expect their personal information to be treated with absolute care. As AI enabled tools automate more of the clinical workflow, vigilance becomes even more critical. Digital transformation only works when cybersecurity and clinical safety move in lockstep.

A word of caution

However, and this cannot be overstated, not all AI solutions are created equal. In healthcare, "good enough" isn't acceptable. Pharmacies must conduct rigorous due diligence. Is the technology fully compliant with UK healthcare regulations? Is it clinically validated? What happens when it fails? Who bears liability?

Our sector demands 100% trust and reliability. Systems must be transparent, auditable, and backed by robust support. Cutting corners on technology procurement to save money risks regulatory penalties and patient safety.

The path forward

AI represents an opportunity for pharmacies to evolve from dispensing outlets into comprehensive healthcare hubs. The technology exists to make this transformation economically feasible, enabling teams to work with greater confidence, offer broader services, and meet rising patient demand without compromising safety or standards. But real progress depends on careful decision making. Pharmacies must choose partners who prioritise clinical integrity, data security, and operational transparency, rather than superficial innovation.

Ultimately, the goal is not to replace people with technology, but to equip clinicians with tools that enhance their expertise and unlock capacity. Those who adopt AI thoughtfully, balancing innovation with responsibility, will be the pharmacies that thrive, diversify, and remain indispensable within their communities.