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Pharmacy leaders have once again called for a national community pharmacy patient booking service, during a roundtable discussion at the Houses of Parliament last week (February 10).

Organised by tech company Charac and the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), and opened by pharmacist and MP Sadik Al-Hassan, the PharmaTech Connect 2026 event brought together healthcare professionals, policymakers, entrepreneurs and investors to explore how technology is addressing the pharmacy sector’s most pressing challenges, and how pharmatech innovation can support pharmacy’s role in the 10 Year Health Plan (reports Saša Janković) .

During the meeting, Baba Akomolafe, director of Christchurch Health Centre and founder of VideoMed Global, and Ashley Cohen, owner of Pharm-Assist Healthcare, NPA board member and chair of Community Pharmacy West Yorkshire, suggested that community pharmacy is “digitally excluded from the NHS App” and needs a “front door to the NHS” in the form of a patient choose-and-book system.

Currently, the only national access patients have to booking services in community pharmacy is via the National Booking Service (NBS) – an NHS tool that lets patients book vaccination appointments online, currently supporting Covid-19 immunisations and, for some pharmacies, NHS flu jab appointments.

The cross-sector Community Pharmacy IT Group (CP ITG) has already advised NHS England that NBS should align with the NHS Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) “as soon as possible”, which the NPA says would “reduce the burden associated with managing multiple calendars when using NBS”, as well as supporting staff rotas and planning, stock ordering, managing just-in-time deliveries and patient communications.

However, at present, NBS does not integrate with pharmacy appointment systems, with the NPA stressing that “pharmacy appointment systems will also need to align, and development work is required to enable this”.

Speaking to Pharmacy Magazine, Baba Akomolafe said a community pharmacy national booking service could mirror the existing National Booking Service used for vaccinations, and work by “aggregating real-time appointment availability from community pharmacies nationwide, enabling patients to directly choose and book appointments”. This would “streamline and unify patient access to Pharmacy First and other nationally commissioned NHS clinical services.”

Noting that “the necessary technology to implement such a system already exists at GP surgeries”, he said the launch of such a service would represent “a foundational step towards making Pharmacy First a fully scalable reality across England, effectively creating a digital front door for pharmacy clinical services.” 

If this was to happen, Mr Akomolafe said: “Pharmacy First would function far more effectively as a true choose-and-book service integrated within the NHS App or a National Booking Service. At present, however, it remains heavily dependent on GP referrals [and] community pharmacy is therefore digitally excluded as a direct patient choice for clinical service provision.”

As a result, he said the absence of a centralised digital booking pathway and a patient-led digital booking option means “the familiar 8:30am GP appointment rush is simply being displaced to a 9:00am pharmacy rush [which] creates failed referrals, inefficiencies, and frustration for patients, GPs and pharmacists alike”.

However, he stressed that while “interoperability with existing systems is the future … NBS is still not interoperable with any system”.

Immediate improvement

Ashley Cohen told Pharmacy Magazine that community pharmacies would see immediate improvements to practice if such a system was implemented, saying it would “drive extra revenue, allow patients to book in at a time and place convenient to them and the pharmacy staff, and help with the patient information and data collection so we can see the impact of consultations.”

Pointing out that a national booking system was made available “within weeks during Covid before the vaccine was available”, Mr Cohen said: “There is a template platform available that would need some minor adjustments to make it fit for purpose, and flu has been added so it should not be too difficult to add other bookable services.”

As independent prescribing becomes more widespread, Mr Akomolafe said a community pharmacy national booking service is “a natural evolution that would further reduce avoidable GP consultations and maximise the value of the pharmacy workforce” and “should be considered a high strategic priority”. 

 “The NHS 10 Year Plan emphasises shifting care from hospital to community settings, moving from analogue to digital systems, and prioritising prevention over treatment,” he added.

“A national pharmacy booking platform directly supports all three objectives. In essence, such adigital booking platform is not merely a convenience – it is an infrastructure investment in strategic workload management, patient empowerment and long-term NHS sustainability.”