QLine IT has provided IT support to many industries and this increased to offering bespoke and dedicated Pharmacy IT Support from 2023. The Pharmacy industry sits uniquely between retail and medical.
Due to one of our Clients’ expansions, we were asked to support several existing pharmacy sites. The information below shows how QLine IT implemented many of our existing IT solutions.
In addition, over the last 12 months, we have gained valuable insight and experience within the Pharmacy world that many of our pharmacy clients continue to benefit from.
Client Requirement
The Client, who worked in an adjacent industry, purchased several pharmacies and asked QLine IT to provide support.
The Client advised us of the following:
The pharmacies were bought from another company.
All existing IT hardware had been removed.
Internet and Wi-Fi were required (per site).
3-4 new PCs were required (per site).
3 label printers and 2 A4 printers were needed (per site).
USB Smartcard readers (or smartcard keyboards) were required.
A fixed IP address was essential for the industry software.
Internet must have a 4G failover.
While supplying computers and other IT hardware was nothing new, we had to learn the importance of printers. If a pharmacy cannot print, it cannot dispense, which affects its trading licence. If a pharmacy loses its internet connection, it is again unable to dispense.
Our Solution
As with all our Clients, the first step is to arrange to install fibre internet. This is done through our partner ONSIM. They can arrange for an Openreach engineer to visit. For all these Client sites, we were able to get a fast connection with FTTP (Fibre to the Property). In addition, ONSIM supplied a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) number with some Yealink handsets.
As each site requires PCs, we ordinarily advise a mini-PC with a height-adjustable monitor. However, the Client requested AIO (All-in-One) computers because each site had limited space. Additional Dell smart keyboards were ordered to allow NHS smartcards to be used at each terminal. Each staff member must use their NHS-provided smart card to access prescriptions from the NHS spine via the EPS (Electronic Prescription Service). Finally, each computer had a barcode scanner installed.
Once Openreach had installed its fibre line, we set up a switch cabinet containing a Teltonika router, switch, and surge-protected rack-mount power bar. Because the pharmacy requires internet even if the fibre fails, we added a 4G SIM card to the router, which has failover capabilities. Finally, a Ubiquiti access point was added to provide fast Wi-Fi to each site.
After the internet and networking were installed, each computer was installed with a label printer (for printing prescription labels) and two Brother A4 printers: one for tokens (prescriptions) and one for standard A4 documents. The Client provided a tablet EPOS system at each site, which we added to the network, as well as a receipt printer and a credit card terminal.
Due to the security needed when accessing the NHS spine via a 3rd party provider, the staff need not only their NHS smart cards but also a static IP address is required. The 3rd party provider records a static IP address, and only computers with that IP address can access the software. If fibre connectivity fails and the 4G takes over, a mobile network does not have a static IP address. We set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) that can provide a static IP when 4G is used.
QLine IT Costs
The IT costs for the project were considerable. Each site had duplicated hardware.
Costs per item were:
All in One Intel I5 computers – £700.00
Label printers – £150.00
Brother A4 Printers – £290.00
Barcode Scanners – £25.00
Teltonica Router – £350.00
24 port Switch – £120.00
Access Points – £130.00
IT Summary
A pharmacy is a combination of two industries. The health/medical side has NHS and licencing restrictions, third-party software, and strict industry regulation. The opposing side is retail, which incorporates EPOS systems, barcoding, inventory, pricing, and sales.
It was an excellent opportunity for QLine IT to further our expertise within this industry and add this exciting relastionship to our growing Client portfolio.
