A ground-breaking Patient Medication Record (PMR) system is now available to pharmacists across England and Wales, following the first industry accreditation from the NHS in more than a decade.

Titan is an entirely new, innovative, cloud-based PMR solution capable of managing end-to-end  workflow within pharmacies, to speed up the user experience for patients and practice owners alike.

Titan was accredited with Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) R2 accreditation at a national NHS governance meeting today and is now available for use at all pharmacies in England and Wales.

PMR technology in the pharmacy sector has changed very little since the 1990s and, given the complexity of NHS systems architecture, the barrier to entry for new providers has been extremely challenging since electronic prescriptions were introduced in 2005.

With potential to mirror Xero’s impact on accounting, or that of Uber on taxi hire, Titan is a single tool offering a full paperless workflow system for every pharmacy, with safe medicine dispensing and management, control over business activities and reporting, and potential for full integration with other pharmacy applications.

The launch of Titan is the culmination of three years’ work by a significant team of developers, driven and influenced by pharmacy experts, alongside a multi-million pound investment, at Invatech Health based on Stapleton Road in Easton, Bristol.

The award-winning company was set up five years ago and, under the guidance of CEO Tariq Muhammad, has since created an enviable reputation with pharmacists, increasing business growth through providing an innovative electronic medicines management system into UK care homes.

Before setting up Invatech, in the 1990s Mr Muhammad pioneered several pharmaceutical services, as well as building a successful chain of regional pharmacies, aimed at optimising the expertise of pharmacists in the face of a sector increasingly dominated by major high street retailers.

Mr Muhammad believes Titan can help revitalise the pharmacy sector, freeing up pharmacists’ time and enabling them to focus on newly-commissioned patient services, designed to relieve the burden from the shoulders of under-pressure GPs and the wider NHS.

He is initially targeting some 6,000 independent and small group pharmacists in England and Wales, although he has had interest from larger corporates with tendering processes already underway.

“The small chains and independents are the ones which will most benefit from Titan and are the type of pharmacy I’m passionate about helping,” said Mr Muhammad. “They have been greatly deprived from the advances in technology seen in other sectors and have not had the resources to optimise their businesses like the larger chains.

“Technology in pharmacy hasn’t moved with the times – most pharmacies have chaotic back offices, using systems which were developed 16 years ago. It’s all done manually, making a production line which is incapable of meeting the expectations of customers while pharmacists’ skills are wasted putting labels on boxes when they could be helping patients.

“We’re fundamentally different to all other PMRs – ours is not a single station, it’s an entire operating system and a multi-device platform. It’s offering a new way of life for pharmacists.

“Titan is operating on a cloud-based Amazon Web Service and that, alongside the way we work with our application programming interface (API), is a first for the sector.

“We believe the processes we’ve created can save 80% of the pharmacist’s time, freeing them up to do better work, consultation, administering medicines – all the work which they wanted to do when they started pharmacy.

“Titan is the “how” to the problem that everyone in our sector recognises. It can help to deliver the vision that everyone wants, while bringing benefits across the NHS and the health sector.”

Mr Muhammad said that, with pharmacies spending an around £500 per month for their PMR systems, the potential for Titan was significant.

“We’re making it affordable for all pharmacists,” he said, “and we have exciting ideas for how we can develop our pricing structure to make it bespoke for the needs of individual businesses.

“Titan’s going to be a winner for everyone, for pharmacists and for patients, and we’re excited, as well as passionate, about its potential.”