John D'Arcy, the managing director of Numark, has challenged community pharmacists at the company's conference in Delhi to engage with GP consortia and local commissioning boards if they want to survive the Government's health reforms. Community pharmacy largely remains wary about the coalition's proposals to hand GPs control of an £80 billion health care budget.

That will place them firmly in charge of service commissioning and some pharmacists are concerned they may be marginalised, as Labour's shadow health minister John Healey alluded to in a written address at the Sigma conference in Mauritius last month. D'Arcy, however, maintained that pharmacists will have a prominent role to play in a restructured health service as long as they are proactive and engage with GP consortia. "Relationships with GPs are sometimes very good, sometimes not so (good), and we need to focus on that engagement," he said.

"You need to identify what it is (GP consortia) need. There's no point selling a service that's of no use to them. You need to identify what is relevant. "The vision is creating a service-led pharmacy which is adequately remunerated. We've got to be focused and engaged. (Pharmacists) have got to be the local leaders."