New NPA partnerships to benefit independent pharmacies

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has announced business partnerships with two digital healthcare companies, helping independent pharmacies to benefit from their patient apps.

The companies, MedAdvisor and Healthera, provide smartphone apps that allow community pharmacies to complement, via a digital platform, the face-to-face dialogue that takes place on the pharmacy premises.

Harpreet Chana, Digital Consultant for the NPA, said: “The NPA wants to ensure that all of its independent pharmacy members can mobilise digital technology to improve patient care.

"The NHS has clearly signalled its aspiration to give patients more control over their healthcare including medicines use. By bringing these two patient app suppliers to our members, we are helping set independent pharmacies up for further digitally-enabled care in the future.”

NPA has endorsed MedAdvisor as the recommended digital medication management platform for community pharmacies. The Australia-based company is gearing up to launch their app across the UK and their solution will provide an automated pre-populated drug list making it easy for the patient order repeat prescriptions from their GP.

The time-saving features of the app include automation of patient-generated repeat prescription request being sent to GPs and automated reminders to prompt patient when their medication is ready to collect.

Jamal Butt, CEO of MedAdvisor UK, said: "MedAdvisor is all about empowering people with their health so they live healthier lives, and this partnership with the NPA provides a great opportunity to help step-change medication adherence across the UK.

"We bring value to patients using innovative technology solutions and we look forward to forging new partnerships with independent pharmacies across the UK."

Healthera has been operating in the UK since 2016 and has been listed on the NHS Apps Library. It too helps patients to manage repeat prescriptions and medication, book appointments and contact their pharmacist for clinical advice. The latest partnership with NPA is expected to increase the convenience of the pharmacy service and help optimise medicine use.

Quintus Liu, CEO of Healthera, said: “As the UK’s largest technology platform for pharmacies and GPs, Healthera has enabled pharmacies to go the extra mile for their patients. We hope our partnership with the NPA will help us to support even more community pharmacies to retain and grow their patient base.”