Across the health system | A question to investigate
More useful reviews begin before the consultation.
A clinical pharmacist's diary can be full while the work around a structured medication review remains fragmented. Preparation, missing information, coordination and follow-up all compete with the conversation itself. For GP practices and primary care networks, our proposed PHARMORIS evaluation asks whether that surrounding work can become clearer and less wasteful, while protecting the professional judgement and patient priorities that give the review its purpose. The opportunity is to examine usable capacity, rather than celebrate appointments booked.
In the conversation.
NEUVIOR and our founder’s perspectives have appeared across science, business and technology publications.
Reporting, commentary, letters and podcast appearances | Read each feature for its format and source.
The queue is only the beginning.
NHS England describes structured medication reviews as person-centred reviews of medicines, undertaken with patients as partners (NHS England, n.d.). Our organisational question begins with how people reach that conversation. A list of candidates is not a delivery plan. Teams need to understand who prepares the record, how incomplete information is resolved and which follow-up work returns to the pharmacist. Looking only at completed appointments can hide repeated chasing, postponed reviews and the time needed to close an agreed action properly.
Count the whole working episode.
A useful local baseline would follow a review from preparation to closure. It would include checking information, booking support, conducting the consultation, documenting decisions and coordinating the next step. Record the role doing each task and the interruptions that make it harder. This helps distinguish capacity that could be released through better coordination from capacity that requires additional qualified people. The analysis should resist converting every minute into a theoretical cash saving that nobody can realise.
A practical capacity calculation starts with available review time divided by the observed time for a complete episode. Include preparation, consultation and follow-through in that episode, and report complex cases separately. A smaller preparation burden only creates usable capacity if the released time can be scheduled for meaningful work. This calculation does not set a clinical appointment length; it helps the team understand whether its operational plan matches the work it expects people to do.
Capacity lives around the whole episode.
A free room is only one condition. Explore the resources that determine whether a pharmacy can deliver a service reliably.
Appropriate demand
Enquiries, bookings and eligible completed episodes are different events. A population estimate or busy counter does not establish demand that the service can appropriately meet.
The useful question
Which requests are suitable, and when do people actually need access?
Observe enquiry outcomes, eligibility through the responsible service and timing. Keep unsuitable routing distinct from failed access.
Public pathway interpretation | NHS England (2026) | Pharmacy prescribing-based service commissioning. No patient records or operational results are shown.
Keep the patient's priorities visible.
The reason for a review may matter more than the size of the medicines list. A person may be worried about daily routines, side effects or understanding a recent change. NICE's shared decision-making guidance supports involvement and understandable information (NICE, 2021). In our proposed evaluation, preparation quality would therefore include whether the professional can see the person's concerns and communication needs. A shorter preparation time would not count as success if useful context disappears or the conversation becomes more difficult.
Compare preparation, not prescribing authority.
A first PHARMORIS study could compare two ways of preparing the same type of review: the team's usual approach and a bounded, source-linked organisational brief. Inputs would be a locally agreed task description, permitted materials and a checklist defined by clinical reviewers. The work could begin with synthetic or appropriately de-identified examples. Reviewers would assess completeness and corrections independently. No patient-specific treatment decision, clinical sign-off or appointment priority would be delegated to the software in that initial scope.
The review needs time around the conversation.
Space, professional cover and follow-through have to meet in the same operating window. Examine the constraint before investing.
A primary care team is deciding how to allocate capacity for structured medication reviews. A count of appointment slots does not explain preparation, appropriate professional availability or work arising afterwards.
Distinguishes an empty room from usable service capacity and shows why a purchase may fail to resolve the real constraint.
What would we need to understand?
- Agreed review-preparation task
- Actual professional cover and preparation time
- Follow-up work returned to the team
- Appropriate professional quality checks
Constructed decision example | No customer results are shown.
Measure the effort that comes back.
Candidate outcomes include total preparation and checking time, missing information detected, reviewer corrections and follow-up actions with an accepted owner. Rework should be counted wherever it lands, including administration and other practices. Review quality must be assessed alongside speed, using criteria agreed before comparison. Results should be separated by straightforward and complex examples; an attractive average can conceal failure in the cases that consume the most attention. Any claim of increased clinical capacity would require further observation in actual delivery.
Know when the proposition fails.
The evaluation should stop if important information is omitted, reviewers cannot trace a claim or the combined preparation and checking burden increases beyond the locally agreed tolerance. It should also stop if assembling permitted inputs is more work than the proposed brief removes. These are useful findings. They would show whether the next investment belongs in software, a simpler handoff or the staffing model. A good evaluation gives the PCN a decision it can defend, including a decision not to proceed.
Build a capacity case people recognise.
The discussion should include a clinical pharmacist, practice operations lead and someone responsible for the PCN's medicines work. Bring one recurring review-preparation problem and an example of what currently causes delay, with confidential details removed. We would agree the comparison, safety boundaries and acceptance criteria before deciding whether a study is practical. For an investor, the commercial question is equally specific: can a repeatable organisational task justify adoption after support, checking and training are included? That remains a question to test.
NEUVIOR Data Analysis
A source.
A question.
A clearer decision.
Useful intelligence keeps its evidence attached.
Our public analysis connects a defined question with named sources, reporting periods and methods. Each source below shows the work available today and the access still needed.
Published-data analysis, research hypotheses and evidence studies are distinct kinds of work. Their meaning should remain clear as the programme grows.
NHS Business Services Authority | Annual
Prescription Cost Analysis
How does activity differ from ingredient-cost concentration?
Analysis availableNHS Business Services Authority | Monthly
English Prescribing Dataset with SNOMED Code
Which product and organisational patterns merit a closer investigation?
Metadata retrievedMedicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency | Event-driven; monthly roundup also published
Medicines and device safety communications
Which official communication should a responsible team read next?
Snapshot retrievedNHS Business Services Authority and NHS England | Weekly
Dictionary of medicines and devices
Can the same product identity be followed consistently across sources?
Access reviewSources and further reading
NHS England (n.d.) Structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/pharmacy/smr/ (Accessed: 14 October 2026).
NICE (2021) Shared decision making, NG197. Available at: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng197/chapter/recommendations (Accessed: 14 October 2026).
Another useful angle.
- Make the discrepancy visible before it becomes another handoff.
A medicines list can travel quickly while uncertainty about a change travels with it.
- A monitoring task needs an owner, not another reminder.
A task can look complete in one organisation while remaining unresolved in another.
- See the whole outpatient pharmacy choice.
Hospital outpatient pharmacy choices connect patient experience, clinical responsibility, operational capacity and commercial terms.