Covid-19 has placed immense pressure on the NHS and HSE. Whilst pharmacies remained open during lockdowns, many other medical professionals had to close their doors. Since then, pharmacists have seen an increasing number of them gravitate towards cooperating with, and supporting, pharmacies. This is creating an organic process whereby diverse medical disciplines don’t just collaborate, they work together under one roof. It is now clear that, within a decade, we will see new medical and well-being centres, which we are labelling ‘Super Pharmacies’, transforming the healthcare system in all aspects.
As Founder and CEO of Alitam, one of the UK & Ireland’s largest pharmacy groups, I have unveiled a £1billion ‘Pharmacy of the Future’ concept, focused on integrating a range of healthcare services under one roof. Our nations of the UK and Ireland will become the first in the entire world to focus on disease prevention, rather than the more costly business of treatment. Thus improving well-being, reducing deaths and reducing our citizens’ tax liability with fewer hospitals and GP surgeries needed to be built.
For the first time ever, dentists, opticians, physiologists, midwives, nurses and pharmacists will be working side-by-side across 500 ‘Super Pharmacies’.
Without having to pre-book, customers will also benefit from walk-in eye and blood pressure tests, dental check-ups and counselling. Such ‘on demand healthcare’ will even extend to a full-body MOT, given while they wait for a prescription.
Waiting times, meanwhile, could be slashed by as much as 90 per cent as our ‘one-stop-shop’ approach to healthcare will relieve pressure on NHS and HSE secondary care services. According to NHS England, waiting lists have sky-rocketed to 6 million since the pandemic began. They also reveal that 18,500 people have been waiting for a routine operation for at least two years — seven times more than last summer.
We cannot go on like this. The time has come to speed up our roll-out of Alitam ‘Super Pharmacies’ and help people get the healthcare they so desperately need. Over the next decade we will transform more than 500 High Street premises into state-of-the-art wellness and medical centres offering cosmetic, dental, and ophthalmological procedures, primary care advice and diagnosis, living aids and medicines all under one roof. This will have a huge impact on hospital footfall, allowing secondary healthcare staff to do their job efficiently and under less stress, while people everywhere benefit from healthcare that’s quick to access and cheap, too.
Significant change within pharmacy and healthcare is just around the corner. This change is inexorable and follows a pattern seen in other industries and sectors such as retail. (For example, supermarkets now integrate a wide range of offerings in-store, which – like dry cleaning and electrical goods – were formerly separate businesses on the high street.) We are proceeding at pace now, fuelled by my fervent belief in preventing disease and offering trusted, easily accessible healthcare at all times to everyone.
A new dawn for healthcare is upon us.
Alitam Group
7th December 2020
We’re all incredibly proud to see Kalpen Patel, one of our extraordinarily talented pharmacists based in North London, dominating the headlines as he administers Sir Keir Starmer’s booster jab.
Zachary Brech
CFO
Prakash Patel
Operations Director
read bio
Dhruv Patel OBE
Deputy Chairman
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Anthony Isaacs
Board Consultant & Corporate Finance
Feisal was born to do things differently. Growing up on a council estate in Bracknell, there was never any doubt in his mind that he’d transform something, someday. “I was always looking at things in a different way to everyone else,” he says. “I could see, even then, that people tend to stick to the same way of doing things.” He smiles, “My instinct was always to turn things on their head, to creatively spin ideas in my mind and see what happens. You suddenly free up possibilities, it’s like you take the brakes off and can power forward.”
As a young man, it became very clear to Feisal and those around him that the corporate world was the right home for this unique drive. At the tender age of 27, Feisal took the leap of faith to leave employment with an intent to disrupt and innovate the accountancy sector. He began self employment by working from his 3-bedroom ex council house. Just affording a £5k deposit (and borrowing legal transaction fees from his parents), he purchased his first small home in 2002 and began industry disruption from his own bedroom. He invested just £450 on second hand goods including a desk, fax machine, printer and a very dated laptop. Within weeks, his marketing systems were working effectively and he was engaging thousands of accountants into seminars where he began a career of motivating, influencing and directing substantial change in the accountancy sector.
A short animated story showing Feisal’s story so far. His journey all started from the back of an ex council house with just £5k of savings.
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