Kamsons Pharmacy has become the latest pharmacy group to invest in hub-and-spoke technology.

The family-owned group, which has 85 pharmacies across England, has installed a FLOWRx auto hub in its new warehouse in Uckfield, Sussex. In addition, its pharmacies will use the FLOWRx in-store software to give their pharmacy spokes full visibility of prescriptions dispensed offsite and their status.

Once orders are received back at the branch, the in-store software also guides pharmacy teams through the dispensing process for any items that could not be dispensed by the hub.

Currently 13 Kamsons pharmacies are using the hub for dispensing repeat original packs as the operation ramps up. Through the course of the year the group will roll out this model of dispensing to further pharmacies.

The hub is already dispensing an average of 45,000 packs a week – more than 80 per cent of packs requested by the branches. This leaves plenty of scope to ramp up and fulfil items for other branches.

Dave Howells, deputy chief operations officer for Kamsons, said: “The new pharmacy contract puts even greater emphasis on the requirement for pharmacies to deliver more clinically-led services. However, dispensing remains at the core of what pharmacies do.

“We knew that moving to a hub-and-spoke model was one of the ways that we could release capacity in branch to create more time to deliver services while still maintaining our high dispensing volumes. After looking at a number of options, we opted for the FLOWRx solution by Centred Solutions as it provides us with one end-to-end solution.”

Ashley Kilgas, chief commercial officer at Centred Solutions, said: “For those considering this way of working, it is important to remember that hub-and-spoke is so much more than a system. It’s a significant change to the way pharmacies work.

“The experience [of our team] in this area is unparalleled. They have been able to use that vast amount of knowledge and experience to guide the team at Kamsons through their hub and spoke journey.”