An online pharmacy which specialises in supplying medication to care homes across the Midlands has expanded into a bigger unit.
Inpsire Pharmacy was set-up in 2013 by Stoke-on-Trent-born pharmacist Usman Mir who spotted a gap in the market for an online pharmacy business.
After giving up his Boots Pharmacy job, he launched launch his own venture from a small unit in Croft Road, Newcastle-under-Lyme, dispensing and delivering medication for patients across North Staffordshire.
Today Inspire Pharmacy supplies 24 care homes in the Midlands and South Cheshire and in excess of 400 patients with medication – sometimes within a matter of hours.
It also offers a same-day free prescription delivery service to individuals in their own home – if orders are placed before 6pm – and conducts annual medication audits for care homes to ensure they are meeting CQC standards.
Company director Usman said: “I was working at Boots in Newcastle when I spotted a gap in the market for this kind of service. I noticed that care homes were getting quite a poor service when it came to medication, particularly at weekends when they often had to wait until Monday for medication only for it to be too late when it arrived.
“So I decided to launch a distance selling pharmacy which could act a middle man between patients, doctors and pharmacies.”
At the moment, Inspire Pharmacy employs a 10-strong team of staff, but after relocating to a bigger unit – more than double the size – just a few doors down from its original premises, the company is now looking to expand its workforce. It is also planning to increase the amount of medicine it dispenses each month, from 14,000 items to 20,000 by the end of the year.
Usman said: “It has been hard to get to where we are now. People were very sceptical about it at first but now we are growing.
“Over the last few years we have taken on more and more care homes and it got to a point at the other place where we just weren’t physically able to store enough medication on-site.
“So the whole purpose of us moving here is to allow us to offer a more efficient service, create new jobs and increase the number of patients we work with – we want to become a bigger business.”
Former care home manager and CQC inspector Leanne Cunliffe is the operations manager at Inspire Pharmacy.
She said: “We are dealing with a lot more care homes than ever before and we’ve got quite a few more that we are taking on in the coming months.
“The industry is changing and everything is moving towards online and delivery services, so we need to be in a position to be able to meet that growing demand.
“We are a local business but we are expanding regionally, hence the need to relocate to a bigger premises.”
Bosses at the company have attributed their success to the introduction of a new, electronic medicine management system called Atlas, an innovative piece of technology which monitors a patient’s medical needs and reduces human error when it comes to dispensing that medication.
Usman said: “Most of the care homes that we deal with use Atlas because it saves them time and money. They have to pay a licence fee to use it, but they quickly see a return on their investment.
“We started using Atlas about four years ago and that has played a big part in helping us to grow; we were one of the first online pharmacies to use this system.”
