National pharmacy chain Well has launched a brand new start-up aimed at pioneering a new digital healthcare businesses.
Well Digital is part of a programme to bring the firm into the digital era, and ‘establish it as an industry leader’.
Based at the company headquarters in Manchester city centre, the initial focus will be on creating new services to appeal to their diverse customer base, and developing innovative tools to enhance operations.
Chris Ellett, director of transformation, said: “In 2017, we live our lives online and our expectations as consumers have radically changed thanks to disruptive services like Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.
“However, the pharmacy sector is lagging when it comes to digitisation and the patient experience hasn’t dramatically changed since the Internet and mobile technology became commonplace.
“Part of my role is to modernise our business to meet and exceed the standards our customers have come to expect in other areas of their lives.
“We’ve recently made a significant investment in technology to improve efficiency for our pharmacy teams, and now we need an industry-leading digital operation to support this”.
Well Digital have created a dedicated blog and Twitter account to document their transformation journey in a transparent and interactive way, encouraging two-way communication with colleagues and customers.
Well is the UK’s largest independent pharmacy chain with 780 stores (and the third largest pharmacy operation after Boots and Lloyds), serving 1.3 million customers every week and dispensing 75 million prescriptions each year.
It employs more than 7,000 people and its new service launches today, May 23.