Paul Stuart
Patients collecting prescriptions ordered online from Boots can now do so using a locker system installed in three of its UK stores.
The lockers, which launched on 27 June 2019 in its new flagship store in Covent Garden, London, contain 162 compartments from which patients can collect their prescription using a code sent to them by text.
Speaking at the launch, Stephen Watkins, director of pharmacy items at Boots, said the lockers have “a convenience factor that our patients are really looking for”.
He added that the locker units, which were installed in June 2019 in Boots pharmacies in Thornaby-on-Tees and Manchester, cost the company “in the tens of thousands [of pounds]” and will next be installed in stores in Cambridge and Sheffield’s Meadowhall Shopping Centre in August 2019.
Watkins said that the feedback from patients has been “really positive”.
“But we’re also looking to try one where it would be on the fascia [of the building] so you could have 24-hour access.”
If necessary, pharmacists will still have the ability to communicate with patients who chose to use the lockers, Watkins explained.
“If there’s something whereby [a pharmacist] really needs to speak to the patient, [the system will] send a different text message [instead of a code], which says actually come to the express pick-up lane and [pharmacists will] be able to communicate with the patient,” he said.
Boots’s new ‘express pick-up lanes’, which aim to allow patients to collect their prescription in two minutes or less and have also been installed at the Covent Garden flagship store, are due to be introduced at 600 of the company’s busiest UK pharmacies.
