Pharmacists, Suppliers, Manufacturers, Press and Health Professionals filed into the Gavea Conference Hall in the Sheraton Rio Grande Resort Hotel to participate in Sigma’s 9th Annual Conference held between the 13th-17th February 2017. The proceedings were ably chaired by Claire Ward of Pharmacy Voice who has held the role for most of the Sigma conferences.
The conference was formerly opened by Dr Bharat Shah MD who introduced the conference theme, ‘Raising the Bar’. The event was further acknowledged by Theresa May PM with a letter to all the delegates wishing them well for the conference and to add her support to all that the pharmacists were doing in the independent sector. She wanted to see a ‘thriving community pharmacy service’ and added that ‘the Government is committed to achieving this’. This was followed by video recordings by the past and present Health Secretaries, The Rt Hon. Alistair Burt MP and The Rt Hon.David Mowat MP.
Initially, the expectation of many was that the conference programme might once again regurgitate some of those old clichéd messages like ‘the need for change’, ‘working together’, ‘NHS cuts’, ‘thinking outside the box’ etc. However, the conference was taken by surprise with the consistent call to innovate and to use practical, in-pharmacy applications to run a better business model, all from an independent’s point of view.
Virtually every speaker had something original and fresh to bring to the conference and was highlighted by notable contributions from speakers like Ian Strachan, who’s heartfelt appeal for a single voice was appreciated by all. Sandra Gidley, the RPS English Pharmacy Board Chair, enlightened us all with a spirited presentation about promoting a ‘New World’ for pharmacy, cleverly using past Olympic sportsmen and women to demonstrate her talk. David Reissner, a senior partner at Charles Russell Speechlys and a regular Sigma conference speaker, laid out the full implications of the forthcoming Judicial Review and the possible legal outcomes of which pharmacy needed to be aware of. After the lunch break, he teamed up with his fellow legal partner Noel Wardle to run a team quiz which was both informative and highly entertaining. Day one closed with the first of two videoconferencing sessions featuring Dr Ethie Kong, the Brent CCG Chair who spoke about Clinical Commissioning Groups, Primary Care and Collaborative Integrated Working. She encouraged the conference to engage with the medical profession and to try and bridge the gap with the crucial role pharmacy can play in the community. She also drew attention to some of the key policy drivers on the road to integration which was greatly appreciated by the conference.
Day two was kicked off with the CIG triumvirate of Adrian Wistreich, Richard Thomas and Lesley Johnson who brought forth a panoply of interesting statistics and media linked opportunities to help ‘In a shifting landscape’. The message here was how pharmacy could tap into digital health management using recent innovations in technology. The audience was further captivated by the passionate presentations of the 4 pharmacy champions on stage: Olutayo Arikawe, Adeyemi Williams, Dushyant Patel and Hatul Shah, who each shared their personal experiences in running their businesses in new and innovative ways. Ade Williams in particular, shared how the introduction of a more ‘tropical’ environment in his pharmacy increased the customer footfall with many children dragging their parents into the pharmacy, just to see the monkey on the tree! Hatul Shah made us all sit up with his unique way in achieving KPI’s within his pharmacy and training staff to ‘raise the bar’ in their customer relations. Tess Fenn who heads up the Pharmacy Technicians UK team spoke about the importance of the pharmacy technician who added real value to every pharmacy and could be utilised to promote new workflows within the pharmacy. Warwick Smith, who heads up the BGMA had an interesting twist on the Judicial Review under the title of ‘Life after the Bill’. He roamed the full length of the conference stage (in customary style) yet delivered a powerful treatise on what could transpire for the UK drugs market and possible actions that pharmacy could take to soften the blow. He clearly didn’t mince his words and his ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ from the previous year had been borne out by what faces pharmacy today. His comments were well received by all.
Day two was closed by the second videoconferencing session from London where Martin Sawer of SecuMed, joined by his two colleagues, presented the inside story on what was happening in the world of Falsified Meds and FMD Directives. He dwelt a bit on the Brexit implications and how the new packaging guidelines would be implemented together with a legal timeline for pharmacy.
The final conference day began with a Sigma presentation from Sales and Marketing Director Rajiv Shah, who launched the new ‘Advantage 82’ and ‘Advantage Academy’ schemes which integrated the new SigConnect online portal together with a customised set of focused schemes that really added value to every pharmacy. This was all linked together with Sigma’s newly formed partnership with American Express giving every pharmacy a huge 114 day credit limit…unheard of in pharmacy and the only pharmacy wholesaler to offer such generous credit terms. This was followed by an animated and inspiring talk by the ever-popular Trevor Gore who was presented with a lifetime achievement award for ‘Outstanding contribution to the OTC Industry’ at the SMaRT awards 2016. Trevor brought a down to earth pharmacy checklist of positive ways to drive customers into the business under the working title of ‘Mission Possible’.
His unique style of mixing hard fact with a liberal dose of levity was so well received and has guaranteed him a place at next year’s conference. The lion’s share of hard facts and industry statistics were mostly taken care of by the presentations made by Tim Nancholas of Kantar World Panel UK and Carol Alexandre the Director of Quintiles IMS. They each had so much carefully researched information for us all to take in and attention was drawn to how shortliners and independents outperformed the markets. Fred Ayling showed us the importance of having a strong social media presence and the value the new digital technologies would add to pharmacy. He demonstrated many practical ways in which every pharmacy could implement such changes and realise the benefits almost immediately.
The final session was taken by Claire Ward and Fin McCaul who homed in on the ‘7 Habits to Gold’. The ever-popular Ward/McCaul duo closed the previous conference in similar style by calling everyone to think of the many ways they could ‘Raise the Bar’ by cultivating the 7 Habits to Gold. They cleverly handled their presentation by seamlessly taking over from each other like an Olympic relay team. One of the notable quotes they used was taken from the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said ’We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit’. They used some very powerful mind diagrams that made us all think of how we could all create that habit in our businesses and to try and achieve these ‘golden’ objectives if we are to move forward and survive in the new environment facing pharmacy in 2017 and beyond.
The UKTI was also in attendance and was there to help with Import/Export potential to and from Brazil. As a growing economy, the Brazilians are keen to promote their Latin American credentials and would naturally welcome all trading opportunities.
The conference was closed by Dr Bharat Shah who spoke about the need to ‘Raise the Bar’ in his own business at Sigma, because of the implications coming out of the conference. He stressed the urgency to recognize the need to do something different by bucking the trend. He spoke passionately about his new initiative in partnership with bath University, to launch a PhD project that would officially place a pharmacist in every CCG body in the UK. He was confident that this would come to fruition in 2025 and be a standard way of running CCG’s. He also quoted Graham Phillips (one of the recorded video presenters) who said that “Pharmacy is an opportunity waiting to happen”. He also encouraged pharmacy to be more proactive by working towards a common end. He thanked all the key workers and team members who made the conference happen not least of all the supporters and conference delegates for their loyal support and help. He then blew everyone away by announcing next year’s conference at Langkawi, Malaysia 2018 with a short video presentation of the resort and venue.
