Manchester software house. We build websites, web and mobile apps, MVPs and AI for UK businesses.
A community pharmacy’s phone rings for three kinds of call: where a prescription has got to, whether the pharmacy can see someone about a common condition, and a medicines question that only the pharmacist should answer. The first two are what fill the counter queue and pull staff away from dispensing. We build AI phone answering, booking chat and prescription-status updates that handle those two, read from the system your pharmacy already runs, and pass the third straight to the pharmacist on duty.
The same team dispenses, serves the counter and answers the phone. Every “has my prescription come through yet?” call takes someone away from dispensing, and the calls cluster at exactly the times the counter is busiest.
The NHS explains that a repeat request made in the NHS App goes to the GP surgery for sign-off before it is issued to the patient’s nominated pharmacy, and warns that preparation can take up to 3 to 5 working days. Patients ring the pharmacy either way, even when the request has not yet been signed off.
Since NHS England launched Pharmacy First on 31 January 2024, pharmacies have seen patients for seven common conditions — sinusitis, sore throat, earache, infected insect bites, impetigo, shingles and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women — either walking in or referred by a GP practice or NHS 111. Many of those calls just need to know when to come in.
Under the Medicines (Pharmacies) (Responsible Pharmacist) Regulations 2008, every pharmacy must have a responsible pharmacist securing its safe and effective running. A phone line that tries to answer a medicines question itself, however well meant, works against that.
Answers every call, tells a patient where their prescription stands when your system shows it, explains the GP sign-off stage when it does not, and books consultation slots — passing any medicines, symptom or side-effect question straight to the pharmacist.
AI Voice Agents pricing and detailsHandles opening hours, collection and delivery questions and consultation bookings in chat, from your own pharmacy information, with the same hard stop at anything clinical.
AI Chatbot Development pricing and detailsSends a message when a prescription is actually marked ready or out for delivery, triggered by your system rather than a calendar guess, so fewer people ring to ask.
AI Automation pricing and detailsReads prescription status and the consultation diary from the system you already run, to whatever interface it actually exposes, without writing anything to the clinical record.
AI Integration pricing and detailsNo. It is built to recognise a medicines, symptom, interaction or side-effect question and pass it to the pharmacist on duty, by transfer or call-back. Every pharmacy must have a responsible pharmacist under the Medicines (Pharmacies) (Responsible Pharmacist) Regulations 2008, and nothing we build takes a clinical judgement away from them.
No. Whether a patient is suitable is decided by the pharmacist following NHS England’s clinical pathways for each of the seven conditions. The agent can explain that the service exists, take a booking or a call-back, and leave the assessment to the consultation.
What your system actually shows. If the request has not reached you yet, it explains, in line with the NHS’s own guidance, that repeat requests are signed off by the GP surgery before they are issued to the pharmacy and that preparation can take up to 3 to 5 working days. It never promises a time your system has not confirmed.
It can, and the GPhC’s guidance for registered pharmacies providing services at a distance, updated in February 2025, puts the decision about what can be done safely that way with the pharmacy owner and the superintendent pharmacist. We scope the agent to what your superintendent is comfortable with, and document it.
As a fixed price after a free discovery call. What moves the scope is how many branches you run, whether your pharmacy system exposes live prescription status, and whether you want delivery updates as well as collection. Most pharmacies start with phone answering for status and bookings, because that is where the counter time goes.
A practical guide for UK GP practices and PCNs weighing up an AI receptionist — the tasks it can safely handle, the lines it must never cross, governance to confirm with your ICB, what drives the cost and how to run a four-week pilot.
Most guides on this question are written by people selling the answer. Here is the honest version, including the four situations where we tell UK businesses not to buy one.
A booking chatbot is only as good as the diary it writes to and the rules it works under. What decides whether one works for your business, and what it must never book.
Plenty of agencies close this part of a page with client logos. We do not publish any, because we will not put a name or a number on this site that we cannot evidence. What follows instead is what you can check in a public register, and what sits in the contract either way.
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation and no salesperson. You describe what is costing you time or customers, we ask about the systems involved, and you leave with an honest view of whether this is worth doing. We regularly end that call by saying the tool you already pay for covers it.
The code, the repository and the accounts are set up in your company name rather than ours, and they are yours on completion and full payment. Nothing runs on infrastructure we control, so ending the relationship does not end the thing we built.
Every project is quoted as a fixed price with a written scope after the call, so an over-run is our problem rather than yours. If the scope changes, we say so and re-quote before doing the work, not after.
In the UK or EU, under a data processing agreement, kept only as long as you specify. Any model provider we rely on is named as a sub-processor rather than left implicit, and we will tell you plainly where something you have asked for would put a commitment of yours at risk.
Agreed before launch rather than negotiated during an incident: what is covered, how quickly we respond, and what counts as new work. Every build has a defined escalation to a person, because the failure that costs you is the one nobody noticed.
Big Berri Limited is registered in England and Wales, company number 16562429, and registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC119995. Both are public registers. Look us up rather than taking our word for it.
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