The Pharmacy Planet Podcast: Pharmacy Technology, AI & Digital Transformation: The Expert Opinion with Pritpal Thind

And, um, we slowly worked up to working with the national services. So Sona provides all the national services on our platform, uh, that are things like, um, you know, COVID 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Across London, uh, and across the whole of England actually. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: Um, flew. Uh, pharmacy first, uh, and those services like, uh, hypertension and contraception.

And the latest one is the emergency contraception, which is a great service, uh, which takes patients out of the GP side and they can come and be serviced by pharmacy. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay, great. So, um, let's just start about how you started in this, in this piece. So when you started 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : It is, you don't mind me saying it was a, a long while ago.

Right. So Sonar Informatics has been in the game for a long, long time. Yeah. So do you wanna just tell us a bit about where did you study, first of all? 

Pritpal Thind: I went to the lovely city of 

Liverpool. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. And Oh, beautiful. 

Pritpal Thind: I had. You know, I spent three years in Liverpool those times. The course was just three years, and I wish it had been longer.

You know, I should have stayed, you know, I still miss Liverpool. It's um, it's a wonderful city. You don't 

Boo Dhaliwal : support them, do you? Football team. 

Pritpal Thind: I do actually. Oh yeah. God. The thing is 

Boo Dhaliwal : you've already started off on the wrong footprint path. 

Pritpal Thind: It's not, it's not because, it's not because my brothers bought Liverpool.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: It's 'cause when I went there, it was that time, uh, you know Kenny, Doug Le Oh yeah. Kevin Keegan. You know, it was in those, those years when 

Boo Dhaliwal : eighties wasn't 

Pritpal Thind: it? Yeah. So we were, we were, uh, you know, we won, uh, the league and we won, um, you know, the European Cup and so on. And on the, on the ground, uh, in near Liverpool Station, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: you would have people writing.

You know, Liverpool is magic. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Everton is tragic. So it is a two, two team city. 

Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So either you are Liverpool or Everton, but I really only started supporting Liverpool, um, when I went to Liverpool itself. Alright. Because I was in the city and I loved the city and the people I met, you know? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. And then, uh, from, from Liverpool then you went on to 

Pritpal Thind: Well, I, I did a, I did a master's at, um.

Chelsea, which is now, um, part of University of, uh, London. But I did a master in bio pharmacy. So when I came back to London, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: I did my pre-reg in, um, hospital in, um, west Middlesex Hospital. And I met a really, uh, brilliant guy who was my tutor, a guy called George Lantos. And uh, when I started my uh, sort of pre-reg, she said, what are you gonna do this year?

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: I said, well, I'm hoping to do my pre-reg. He says, why have you done, are you not gonna do a master's or anything? And it was the last day that you could actually, um, register for the master's course. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So he gave me, he got me the morning off. He said, go and register. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And I registered and it was great.

We had two years, uh, you know, of uh, fun. Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. And then after that, then what? You bought a pharmacy, you locum worked for a pharmacy. 

Pritpal Thind: After my hospital, pre-reg, I did a couple of. Really, I mean, it was quite amazing. I did less than one year in, um, uh, community pharmacy. I only did a few locums. The longest stint I had was working for the co-op.

Boo Dhaliwal : Right. 

Pritpal Thind: And I did about, I think two months. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: And then I went to India. I went to India for two months, three months, and I did a few more locums. And I had the opportunity to buy a pharmacy and bought my pharmacy. So I bought my pharmacy. Really? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: As a novice, I had no idea of what, what it was gonna involve.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So I just learned it as we, uh, as we went. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. Now, um, how did you go to make that a. This was quite a while ago. Now, pharmacies in those days would, they were mainly dispensary driven, right? So a lot of the time it was just mainly item driven more than anything else. How did you even approach the whole IT side of the, how did you even get into that 

altogether then?

Pritpal Thind: So really, you know what spurred me on to do, go into, it was a white paper that came out. Um. In around the two thousands. And in it I read it and I read it and I was thinking, how are we gonna do this? And you had to make a record of your consultation with the patient. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And you had to communicate it to the gp.

You had to. Take clinical records, you know, it was really what we are doing nowadays, but at that time, we had just come out of, um, handwriting labels or writing labels on a typewriter. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: The very rudimentary IT systems where we had, they were not really conceived for pharmacy from a pharmacy services 

angle.

All of those systems really started from the wholesalers. It was due to. Sly side. The wholesalers started the IT systems. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Really? So they could get their order. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. It was all a bit of a, it was all kind of like one circle, wasn't it? Yeah. So a lot of the time you get your systems from, or they were connected to, uh, a wholesaler.

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : So, um, but how, so how did you decide to start your own though? What was all that about? 

Pritpal Thind: Well, you know, I was, uh, you know, 

Boo Dhaliwal : what, what problem were you fixing? Exactly. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, the problem we were fixing at that time, what we were trying to do was possibly create a website for pharmacies. We were trying to look at what sort of services we could do for pharmacies in the.

You know, when the patient needs support, you know? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Right. Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: So this was very, very early stuff. I mean, I came out with some, you know, we, we were offering pharmacies websites in 2000. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Alright. Do you still do that? 

Pritpal Thind: No, we, we've sort of, what's happened is the journey. It's really, uh, runaway train. As we got onto the, onto the journey, we found that.

There's other things to be done. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And you know, my, my, my competitors in, um, the IT world, I always tell them, come on, on, there's so much to do. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: We have a lot to do still. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And it, it's nice that other people are also helping. I feel that we all need to help move forward. The pharmacy profession.

Boo Dhaliwal : Well, you know, even getting in and getting that first contract, was it like hard work? Was it even, uh, how did you even, uh, how did you even cost the. Thing. Like when you first go in for something, you're not even sure how much it's gonna cost you to deliver something like that. Right. So, and especially if it's not your day 

job.

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. So, uh, you know, that aspect of, um, you know, did we write a business plan? Did we plan it, did we have, uh, sort of an Excel sheet saying we'll be earning X amount next year? I've none of that. I 

Boo Dhaliwal : believe I know the answer to this. 

Pritpal Thind: No, we never, that, that was never on my mind. I mean, I, I have never. Uh, being in sonar.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Um, for the bottom line. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: Or for an exit strategy. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You see, 

Boo Dhaliwal : well, you are missing a trick here. Well, I think every, everyone's in on, everyone's in on it nowadays to, to, uh, to get in and out, but go on. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, I, I think, you know, the new companies that are coming in, I mean, especially the companies that are having a sort of, uh.

Um, you know, external investors Yeah. In their company. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Where they've sold an idea that this market is worth X amount. I mean, those companies are following a sort of a model from Silicon Valley. Yeah. Which is, uh, you go in Yeah. You innovate, you, um, fail fast. Yeah. And find the next solution. So one day they could be in pharmacy.

Next time they might be in Tupperware. We don't know. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm a pharmacist. I worked in pharmacy. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, if you saw me in my pharmacy when I was working 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You would not find me in the dispensary or in the bag. I'd be sitting with one of my customers that probably have, having made them a cup of tea.

Boo Dhaliwal : Alright. 

Pritpal Thind: And sitting and listening to them and seeing their story. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I think those days are gone. You can't afford to do that in a pharmacy nowadays. 

Pritpal Thind: I know. Not with every 

Boo Dhaliwal : patient anyway. 

Pritpal Thind: I know. But the thing is that, uh, my heart is serving the patient. And as a pharmacist, I think the closest. Thing you have to really fund 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah.

Pritpal Thind: Is when you know what the patient needs and you can help them, 

Boo Dhaliwal : you know? Yeah. But it is evolving so quick. Like you're saying, there's so many new entrants coming in and you know they're fixing problems you didn't even know you had. Right. So there's, there's people coming in thick and fast. I've, what do you think about all these massive new in, uh, it's, it 

is.

Pritpal Thind: Like, I, I encourage it. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Tech as such, 

Pritpal Thind: I encourage it. Every new, um, IT company that's come into, uh, pharmacy where I have had any communication with them, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: I've always encouraged them. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: I mean, there are 110 problems to solve and not every, nobody's gonna solve all these problems. Right. There's not gonna be one monolith light of, I I phone a, a lot of my pharmacist friends and so on, and they keep sometimes saying, I wish we had just one 

system.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah. If you had just one system, we'll go back to what, um, you know, uh, we tried to do in the NHS in like around the 2005, the mega big projects, you know? Yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah. And they failed. Yeah. The thing is that you need nifty small companies. That can innovate, bring new sort of ways of working. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Mm-hmm.

Pritpal Thind: And eventually those will permeate and create a system where pharmacists have. Access to what they need. Yeah. To provide a really good service to their patients. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. I feel, you know, as a, as a, as a pharmacist, as a contractor, you know, I get a bit frustrated with a lot of these new, new companies, especially when there's nothing wrong.

Obviously you need investors, obviously you need backing and having some professional backing is always a good thing. But I'm finding new people are coming in and it's all about. Like you're saying the Silicon Valley, is it five x 10 x? We're gonna go 10 times. 10 times this year. 20 times this year. Yeah.

And they come in so thick and fast, you know, like. Safety, clinical background, whether it's possible. Sometimes they have kind of like a clinical director who is just pretty much like a, just a post box. It's just a front because there's no clinical input. The speed at which they're trying to get in and out and grow, and it's almost like a giant sledgehammer.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And then it's just fell gone. And it's, it's so frustrating because it's like. Can, it seems like the patient is just a forgotten about part of the whole, the whole thing. They're just too busy trying to grow and it's irrelevant. It's not even profit, it's not even on the, on the table.

They don't even care about profit. It's just about sheer growth in numbers as fast as possible. Yeah, and it is frustrating because a lot of people come to us and it's like, until you're 2, 3, 4 years in, I, I might not even look at it. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, you're looking at a company that's been in for longer. Well, I think.

Boo Dhaliwal : I think, I think you've done your time. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah, so I mean, because our target is not like next year. Um, you know, saying, oh, by next year we must achieve, uh, this much market penetration or something like that. What we are 

trying to do is create a better and better product and eventually, uh, through word of mouth, people will come to us and we, you know, our whole focus is that the pharmacist has an easy way to, um, make his record.

Communicate with the other, um, layers or the NHSI mean, primarily what we wanna do is to help pharmacists to deliver the vision, uh, which is that become a part of the front door of, uh, patient care like we have currently gps, A and e pharmacy, you know, optician, dentists, and so on. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And pharmacists need to be, just become the normal business as usual.

Go in for your, um. Consultations, not just your medicine. If you have an earache, you go to your pharmacy. You know? So really we wanna try to help with that. 

Boo Dhaliwal : But do you think the NHS is actually gonna deliver on that? Do you think? It's act, everyone wants pharmacy to be the front door. Everyone say, everyone can see it being the solution.

Everyone can see it being part of the prevention agenda. Everyone can see it's an very accessible, but who's paying for this? It seems like no one, apart from the pharmacist out of his own pocket. So, how does this work? 

Pritpal Thind: So I think, you know, uh, you know, from a national level, I mean, sonar doesn't have any of these answers that you might think we, you know, 

Boo Dhaliwal : I was just asking you don't worry about sonar.

Pritpal Thind: But what I'm saying is that from my perspective, I have a lot of deep respect for what the journey is in the UK for healthcare. You know, if you look at how, um, things have developed, you know, we started doing, um, uh, vaccinations for flu in the sixties, early sixties. Right. And we've been progressing slowly.

Yeah. Really 

Boo Dhaliwal : forces. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, not pharmacies. I'm talking about the NHS. Oh, 

Boo Dhaliwal : right. 

Pritpal Thind: All right. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: Sorry. So the thing is that, what I'm saying is that the journey of the NHS from the beginning of, uh, you know, uh, starting it, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: I mean starting the NHS Yeah. And becoming such a, um, ubiquitous and everywhere you have the NHS, you know, it's not only in certain areas, you know, you can go to a small town, a village, you'll get the NHS.

Right. We're serving, um, the population, I think. I believe in the NHS and whatever it is. It may not be exactly what we need it to be today, but I think the vision is there. The 10 year plan hopefully will deliver. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I think the NHS has a lot of problems. I think there's structural problems within the NHS and as much as, uh, um, I, I, I admire a vision.

I honestly can't see it being, if you carry on with the same funding model as it is now. Yeah, I just cannot see it succeeding, uh, in any way, shape, or form. I can't see it being fit for the future. The NHS not at all, not in its current funding model the way it is, um, and its current structures as well. We know there's loads of other platforms there.

There's loads of other competition. Why even sonar? What's there's for us as a contractor, interoperability is a big thing. I don't want to use 3, 4, 5 different platforms. I only want to use one. And my problem with sonar is a lot of the time it's not, well, it's not gonna be interoperable with, uh, but I don't think there's many platforms that interoperable at the moment.

Um, and I think that's a big problem in pharmacy. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, you know, interoperability is a word that means that. You, your system can talk to another system. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So to do that, the other system has to open the door. We've been asking, you know, the IT companies 

like eis 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And System One and so on, saying we'd like to work with you.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And um, you know. The door's always been shut. It's 

Boo Dhaliwal : closed shop, isn't it? 

Pritpal Thind: Well, they've been thinking that Sonar is a small company. They'll probably go away one day. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And we won't have to deal with them. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. Do they deal with other, they they deal with other, other company? 

Pritpal Thind: Well, EIS owns pharma outcomes.

Yeah. So basically it's not Emmis anymore. You know? Optum. Optum. So basically we are not, we are not, uh. Averse. We would like to work with them. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: I've even paid them monies to join their, whatever scheme is partnership. I haven't actually got the, go ahead. 

Boo Dhaliwal : You have to pay to join a partnership? 

Pritpal Thind: Yes. 

Boo Dhaliwal : How does that work?

Pritpal Thind: Well, basically if you look at, if you look at their website, they'll have a list of partners at the bottom. Oh yeah. Those partners are paying so, so you could get like a text messaging company that partners with the GP system. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Alright. Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: So they pay. EIS for a certain amount of money out of the money they earn, isn't it?

We would be willing to do that. Interoperability is two systems willing to work with each other and exchange information. Right. So that's instantly available, right. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So that's, it needs two willing partners. Yeah. Right. So, but the NHS is also now writing into the contracts of GP systems. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: That they have to allow GP 

Connect.

To connect. That's why every pharmacy in England can, uh, see a patient's record because the contract for GPS is changing. And I imagine the contract for pharmacies will change as well, that you must, uh, have these systems that allow this sort of service. 

Boo Dhaliwal : But, um, ppa, the chances are if my PMR offers this, I'm not gonna go off platform.

So this is a problem, right? Like this is, I mean, it's not just, it's not a sonar thing. Like there's loads of other. Players out there, and I said, I think, well, I really don't want a golf platform. Not, not unless I can help it. So how are you gonna fix that? 

Pritpal Thind: Well, I think, you know, it's my relationships with the industry and with the pa, with the individual pharmacist that I believe that Sonar is delivering a service.

That's equal to any other provider. If not, we have certain advantages in certain areas. I mean, sonar is connected with all these NHS services and these new companies are coming out with whi Thingss that are new. Right? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: But they're not connected with 

Boo Dhaliwal : whi Thingss 

Pritpal Thind: wi Well, you know, they say they wi things, you know, they, I mean, in essence, what does a pharmacy need?

Yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: it needs a couple of things. It needs a good appointment system. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. You 

Pritpal Thind: need to be Are you doing 

Boo Dhaliwal : that 

Pritpal Thind: as well? Yes, we are. We are doing an, we have an appointment system. You need a contact software. Yeah. So you can text and email your patients. Uh, what else do you need? You need interoperability if, uh, the other partners are willing.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: But then the government can demand it by putting a, uh, a clause in their contract that you have to do these services and that that's what's. That's what the journey we're on. And that's why I'm an optimist that I think the government will enable pharmacies to get that information. For example, 20 or 30 years ago, you couldn't even phone the GP surgery and ask, can I get the blood pressure of the patient, please?

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: No. So now you can log in to sonar, click on uh, GP record. Yeah. And see that record, you know, 

Boo Dhaliwal : well, okay. You know this GP Connect. Yeah. I'm, I'm assuming that this is, it's available at Sonar at the moment, but I'm assuming this whole connection is pretty much gonna become a standard thing in most systems.

Am I right there? 

Pritpal Thind: I would say that, you know, the plan is that, uh, you know, we, 

Sona was one of the first four companies 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: That was on a journey to deliver these services, which we have delivered. Okay. All the four companies have delivered and now I believe that they're gonna expand that to which, which, 

Boo Dhaliwal : which four companies are there?

Pritpal Thind: The Sona? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. The 

Pritpal Thind: best 

one. 

Pritpal Thind: The best one. The best one. Farmer outcomes. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: They've been around a bit. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Uh, positive solutions. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, they're the four main. 

Pritpal Thind: They were the four companies, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: That had the base that the NHS digital thought that they could get these companies to deliver what was required.

I mean, it was very hard delivering this service over the last two, uh, three years. Um, you know, I've had. NHS meetings literally every day, couple of times a day. You know, uh, our IT team has been doing development all, um, all day long. You know, it's not been easy in the background. The amount of, you know, clinical governance, you know, the writing a story about how you're safeguarding the patient.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: When you're creating this IT solution. Creating a bit of it solution has a lot more than just presenting. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, 

Boo Dhaliwal : but all three of them are, are connected to PMR providers. Right. The other three, am I, am I right? 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : So this is where you guys are not, right. So you don't see this as a, as a potential.

Pritpal Thind: Risk. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah, risk floor 

Pritpal Thind: issue, like I said, however you wanna look at it. Like said, when I started the journey 20 odd years ago, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: The PMR companies, they were, um, you know, wholesaler based, just mainly doing a little bit of labeling with a whole, uh, wholesale order. But now, you know, the PMR companies are doing what we, our journey was.

So, in a way. We did what we set out to do. PML companies are gonna deliver what pharmacies need now. 

Sona will have to innovate and bring new stuff. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So that there's relevance and we are doing that. We are bringing new stuff because in the end there will always be a market for various things. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay.

You never thought about partnering with anyone? 

Pritpal Thind: Partnering, you know, because you know, we are 

Boo Dhaliwal : not formally partnering with 

Pritpal Thind: someone. Yeah. So. We would, we would, uh, like to formally partner with, uh, some companies. I mean, we've had, uh, discussions around that, but you know, the last two, three years we've been on it, like, it's been like, uh, working in a bakery, you know, you know, it's been 24 

7.

Boo Dhaliwal : The other thing is like, what I've realized is Sonar is probably well established in London, but pretty much in London, not nationally. I, that's the feeling that I get with our branches. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Is that, is that, would that, would you say that's about fair? 

Pritpal Thind: Because I was, uh, you know, uh, I've been always London based and I've been able to walk in, I mean, when we had the primary care trust in, in the, you know, before they went, uh, closed them down, the medicine management teams of primary care trust were all pharmacies.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So if I walked into a PCT and offered them what we were trying to do, 

Boo Dhaliwal : mm, 

Pritpal Thind: they understood it. When those guys closed down, and I think, you know, that there was a disconnect, but during that time, I, I, I could get into London PCTs and basically they would say, yeah, that sounds interesting. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, I didn't manage to go outside of London.

I think it's a lot to do with the, in those days, how the 

PSNC worked. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: The PSNC, the political body of the pharmacy, I didn't have much buy-in there, you know, so, but I, I'm 

Boo Dhaliwal : surprised they were even involved. 

Pritpal Thind: Oh, they were very highly involved. They actually, uh, they, they, they created their own IT pro platform.

For pharmacists. Uh, they, they, oh, that 

Boo Dhaliwal : was 

Pritpal Thind: every pharmacist invested. Was 

Boo Dhaliwal : that the one before? Farm outcomes? 

Pritpal Thind: Before farm outcomes, yeah. Yeah. You, your pharmacies probably paid thousand pounds per pharmacies to invest in Yeah. An IT system that the PSNC, um, and you, 

Boo Dhaliwal : you were competing with? 

Pritpal Thind: We were competing with because obviously we, so we didn't get outta London for various reasons.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: But we are now available. Across England. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And later on we hope to offer our services across other, uh, you know, the home countries and so 

on. And so 

Boo Dhaliwal : you ever thought about just getting out, selling up? Landscape is changing so much all the time. Pri power. I mean, it's just sort of any, every business owner always thinks, when am I gonna, like, you know, like, when I've been doing it long enough, is it time?

And especially when there's a lot of changes happening. 

Pritpal Thind: Well look, I mean, um, we still have an unfinished job. We still think that there's a lot to do. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And, uh, I still got the energy to do it and I wanna do it. So 

Boo Dhaliwal : unless the office is right. 

Pritpal Thind: I mean, we could, we could have discussions. We, we may have discussions, 

Boo Dhaliwal : oh, look at that.

Like we are open to talk. You heard that everyone, he's open to talk. The other thing I wanna mention, like, you know, when the team said, I said Prial is coming in, they said, who's pri pal? I said, this guy's great. He's the only person I know in pharmacy that I know, pharmacy owner. And his, his ingrained within the uh, uh, contractor network who's got a ponytail.

That was the one thing, and they're like, no way. He's got, I said, he's got a ponytail. And they're like, how old is he? I said, he's not a young lad. Yeah. Although you're quite young, but not a, not a young lad. And they, so they looked at this LinkedIn picture and they're like, he's got rid of his ponytail. I said, no way.

He'd never, that was 

Pritpal Thind: an old picture. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I'm like, no way is he gonna get rid of his ponytail. The ponytail is pri pal. So like, the thing is the cameras aren't gonna get it. We need a bit of a side view here. Pri Pal. Look at that. It's still still going strong still. 

Pritpal Thind: My wife chopped it off a little bit. It's longer, 

Boo Dhaliwal : you know.

Pritpal Thind: Um, can I show you a picture of me? You 

Boo Dhaliwal : can. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. 

Pritpal Thind: I don't know if you can get that. 

Boo Dhaliwal : What we'll do is we'll get, uh, we'll get the, we'll get the team to do a proper scan of it. Yeah. But this is, so 

Pritpal Thind: that, that's a picture of, uh, of, uh, me playing, uh, five side indoor football. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: That was back at uni.

And um, we won. Well, we didn't win it, but we, we were aiming to get into the Guinness World. Um, 

records. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Book of records. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And, um, we played indoor football for nearly 96 hours. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Okay. 

Pritpal Thind: And I'm still playing football. 

Boo Dhaliwal : And now you are in the Guinness World Records. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, that record has been broken, but when the record was live, I used to be able to go to the trod.

In the Piccadilly. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And take my children in for free. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Because you had 

Pritpal Thind: a agreed 'cause we were in the, I was in Guinness World Book of Records. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I think there's some, I think you've got something here. You've got the ponytail, you've got Guinness World of Records, you've got a story. There's some, there's some background in with with Sono.

Pritpal Thind: Right. I'm passionate, I believe, you know, like I live life, you know? Yeah. If you ever meet me 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Outside of this, you know, I, you like, you enjoy a good 

Boo Dhaliwal : drink, you like going out. 

Pritpal Thind: I might even, um, uh, take part in your, um, uh, pub fund, whatever. Oh 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. By all means, contribute. Contribute or help me spend it.

Even help me spend it. Even 

Pritpal Thind: help you spend it. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries. PRI 

pal. Where do you see pharmacy heading, especially now in this new AI landscape? Because, you know, it's all about AI nowadays. You wanna add that in if you're gonna sell up, by the way. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : So mention how you are fully AI enabled, 

Pritpal Thind: so that, that is one of our projects in the background.

We are trying to bring, uh, AI into services now. You know, everybody knows that AI is not ready. Fit for purpose. But, you know, chat, GPT has just started a service in the United States. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Where they can, if, if you're willing to share your medical records with them, yeah. They're willing to give you some advice.

Boo Dhaliwal : That's a, that's a bit of a risk, isn't it? 

Pritpal Thind: Uh, yeah, that's a risk, you know, but in America, you know, I think, uh, people will probably try it. Um, so, you know, ai, there are many advantages of ai, but AI hasn't got to the stage where I think it'll be. On its own work for 

patients. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Are you integrating it with any of your tech?

Pritpal Thind: Yes, we are. We are, we are looking at integrating ai. Um, one of the things that I think that's so important for pharmacies to do in this new interoperability era 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Is note taking. Yeah. When you communicate with a patient. So important to make very good notes. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Mm-hmm. 

Pritpal Thind: That when you send the information to the gp, when they read your notes, they are looking at a, um.

Person sending them like a clinician sending the notes. So it should be is it doesn't matter whether they came from hospital or from pharmacy or an optician, the notes that go between, uh, the different, uh, nodes of healthcare 

Boo Dhaliwal : mm-hmm. 

Pritpal Thind: Should be readable in the same way. So we want professional note taking.

Boo Dhaliwal : Mm-hmm. 

Pritpal Thind: And 

Boo Dhaliwal : loads of systems that do that though. There's loads available. 

Pritpal Thind: No, but you know 

Boo Dhaliwal : Heidi, and you know, there's a couple of others that are already available that already They're trans transcription, I suppose. 

Pritpal Thind: So the, what we are thinking of doing is that we will take the audio. Of your conversation with your patient, with the consent of the patient.

Okay. And then translate that audio from your conversation, like today's conversation we are having. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And translate it into a way where it becomes a clinical note. So you focus on any discussion about. Symptoms. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Mm. 

Pritpal Thind: And any discussion about previous history, and then any discussion about what your medications are, and then any discussions about the recommendations that you're making for the patient and translate it into an easy, uh, sort of summary of that conversation, but so that the clinicians in the other, uh, node, like the GP side Yeah.

When they read it. It's easy for them to understand it. That's, I think that's our next, uh, sort of project that we hope to deliver 

on soon. 

Boo Dhaliwal : PT Pal, everyone who comes onto the show, I ask 'em to make a donation to charity. Um, so who's your Cho? Who's your chosen charity and how much would you like to donate and why?

Why that charity? 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah, so this was a difficult, uh, choice for me, and I think I'm looking at the future of it and the future of the world, actually, 

Boo Dhaliwal : the world. 

Pritpal Thind: The world. 

Boo Dhaliwal : That's, that's a, that's a, that's a, 

Pritpal Thind: because I think one of the challenges in the future is getting information that is, um, you know, that you know is safe.

Yeah. You know, safe information. Is not gonna come easy in the future. 

Boo Dhaliwal : You mean accurate? 

Pritpal Thind: Accurate and safe for children, safe for adults. Oh, okay. Like safe information. A safe space for information. And, um, so I'm gonna make a contribution to Wikipedia. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Oh, right, 

Pritpal Thind: okay. Yeah, because I, I think we need Wikipedia or organizations like that.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: That safeguard the future of, um. The future of what's happening on the internet. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And, um, that's where my go. So 

Boo Dhaliwal : how much would you like to donate to, uh, Wikipedia then? 

Pritpal Thind: I think I'll, I'll contribute 500 pounds. 

Boo Dhaliwal : 500 pounds to Wikipedia. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : So, um, that's a, that's a new one. That's different. To be honest.

I've not, I've never, when people turn around and say charity, you don't think initially, but they do, if you think about it, they probably do a lot for everyone of, for free. Right. So you get a lot of information. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, I, when I look at if I want some information Yeah. That I can trust, right? 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Um, you know, you can Google it, you can do, you know, and you might get a link.

The top link might be a charitable organization. Yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: But they're sponsored and so on. Yeah. Yeah. It may look like charitable, but Wikipedia, if you get a Wikipedia link, yeah. I think it's safe for, you know, for children to check it out. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: For, you know, adults for us as well, it's very difficult to get safe.

Good, honest information. I think Wiki, Wikipedia is doing an excellent job. Um, I could have thought about another hundred. You know, there's another one I was thinking of, which is I'm looking at in the future creating some sort of, uh, um. Uh, foundation or something. And, you know, I'm actually doing it, uh, on a, on a little bit of my 

farm In Punjab.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: Which is that I've taken a back from agriculture and 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: What we've done is we've planted just nature. Nature, so we're planting trees on it. Okay. And it's gonna go back to nature. Okay. Because one of the biggest stress things in in India is that in Punjab, actually. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. The. 

Pritpal Thind: Fauna and flora, the birds, and you know, all animals.

They didn't have no space. I remember when I was born there, no 

Boo Dhaliwal : space in India, 

Pritpal Thind: no space in there. You think they 

Boo Dhaliwal : had plenty of 

Pritpal Thind: space there? No, in the point, I remember when I, I was born in India. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And um, you know, when I was about six, seven years old when we went out of the village 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: We saw like 20, 30 deer running around.

Boo Dhaliwal : Right. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, in parts of, uh, Punjab, you don't see that anymore. And, um, you know, so I, I think we need to as humanity Yeah. Start giving space back to nature. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. That's quite an environmental goal there. No wonder, here's me saying I'd have a giant six liter engine car, and here's you. Planting trees in India, I think, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : maybe I need to rethink my priorities.

I think 

Pritpal Thind: listen, the, the, the, the thing is that, uh, 

Boo Dhaliwal : I'm gonna move from a V 12 to a V eight. I think you've had me thinking now, you know, I really need to, I really need to give back to society. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Do you know what I mean? V 12 engines is not good. Yeah. You know what I mean? V eight is acceptable. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. Yeah.

Boo Dhaliwal : Got it. 

Pritpal Thind: But for the moment, I think Wikipedia is good because I, I think I feel comfortable in their organization. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Pri pal, everyone who comes on, I get them to join the revolution. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : make pharmacy great again. Pharmacy is going through a tough time, so I'm making sure that everyone knows that, uh, we want it to be great again.

Pritpal Thind: Why didn't we have map? 

Boo Dhaliwal : So what happens is map, I mean, the letter, the, the acronym does it can't really spell it easily. So it's a bit of a flaw in the revolution. I'm not gonna lie. Okay. So it's, it is one of those things that probably, uh, is, uh, something we really need to work on because not everyone can, uh, say it correctly, but, uh, make pharmacy great again.

Thank you so much. Thank you. That's 

Pritpal Thind: the mission. Make Farm Sea greater. 

Boo Dhaliwal : That's the mission. 

Pritpal Thind: That's 

it. 

Boo Dhaliwal : That's the mission. We can do it, right? 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : yeah, of course we can. Right? Um, oh, and also I've got a shared load of merch for you as well, so we always have. We always have loads of merch for our, uh, for our, um, for our guests.

So 

Pritpal Thind: thank you so much. 

Boo Dhaliwal : This is for you to take away so that you can also spread the word to make pharmacy great again and join the It's a revolution, not a cult by the way. Yeah, because I had some people saying is that cult is like, no, no, it's a bit cultish, but no. The revolution. Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: There are many revolutions that have been interesting.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: This is another one. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Got some quick fire questions for you. Right profile. Quick five questions. Bloody Jen, what are these? They're so long, uh,

right, PRAL, I've got some, uh, quickfire questions for you. Now, these are conveniently AI generated, so I have no input into these until I actually read them, and some of them I read and I'm thinking, oh, it's a bit odd question. But anyway. Yeah. Okay. Pri Pal, would you rather work from a beach with terrible wifi or an office with perfect wifi but no windows?

That's an odd question, isn't it? 

Pritpal Thind: I, I'd rather go on a beach anytime. 

Boo Dhaliwal : It doesn't matter. Right? What kind of question's that be on the beach? He'd rather go on a beach with terrible wifi 'cause then he doesn't have to work because he hasn't got wifi and he sitting on a beach. No sense 

Pritpal Thind: why, what 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. Exactly.

Pritpal Thind: Enjoy the beach. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. This is, that make no sense at all. Right. Okay. Uh, high tech, electric car or classic combustible engine car. Are you a environmentalist? I, 

Pritpal Thind: I, I would say I'm a, I would, I. My vision is that we should all become environmentalists. Yeah. This, um, this mis misconception that we can carry on as we are, I think it's a gonna be doom and failure.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: I think if I'd rather learn to walk public transport. If I had to have a car, an electric car, a small one. Yeah. Not too big. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I love big engine cars. I'm the complete opposite. And not only that, combustion engines combustion the worst. Yeah. This whole, 

Pritpal Thind: like you've been watching, uh, uh, 

Boo Dhaliwal : top 

Pritpal Thind: gear too much.

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. I love it. I love it. I think the whole thing is this whole electric car landscape. Um, you know, when you're passionate about, uh. Bog standard. Well, combustion engine cars, big combustion engine cars. Yeah, the electric cars just seems so boring. They are so boring. It's like now when I have to drive electric cars, it's like the smile has disappeared from my face.

You know, there's a smile when you drive a 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Drive a a car. The feeling, the thrill of it. But I have to drive a, 

Pritpal Thind: the car, electric 

Boo Dhaliwal : car there. 

Pritpal Thind: The car. The car is used. To get from A to BI 

Boo Dhaliwal : disagree. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. When you get to B, you have all the fun at the beach. Okay. Don't worry about, I 

Boo Dhaliwal : wanna look fun getting to the beaches.

Well, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah. Spend more time at the beach than the journey of A to B. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Would you rather present to a room full of CEOs or explain tech to your family? Well, your family's quite techie anyway, right? So it's probably gonna be 

Pritpal Thind: there. I don't really wanna talk to CEOs. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Really? No, I'm CEO. You don't wanna, 

Pritpal Thind: you don't wanna talk.

I don't think you, here we are not a C You're not, you're not a CEO. I'm not a CEO O all, so I'd rather talk to ordinary people. 

Boo Dhaliwal : And 

Pritpal Thind: preferably like you. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. Do you have to give a lot of presentations and stuff like that in your, you're probably having to sell all the time, right? If you're going into meetings with 

Pritpal Thind: No, I told you.

We don't do any marketing. We may start some marketing. We hardly do any. Everybody who's using sonar knows sonar through word of mouth. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: You know, nobody has been sold it. 

Boo Dhaliwal : I think 

this is a problem though, the lack of marketing. You know, when I went online to look for sonar informatics and any background around yourself, there's nothing there.

Like nothing. Yeah. You would think surely you wanna get the name out there, right? How does this work? It's like, what? I just wanna know, what budget do you have for marketing? 

Pritpal Thind: Oh, I mean, we don't really have a budget for marketing. I haven't spent any money. Well, we, we were at the pharmacy show. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: And, um, at the pharmacy show, uh, we had lots of people visiting our stand, but really it was there because, um, you know, what's happening in the NHS, you have to be there nowadays.

Yeah. Uh, just to be, uh, let people know. But we are not really doing much direct marketing to pharmacies. Or to, um, you know, other avenues, you know, we are not on, we are not in the farm, the chemist and Drugist or in the magazines. You know, you 

Boo Dhaliwal : should be doing this sort of stuff though. No. 

Pritpal Thind: Well, you know, 

Boo Dhaliwal : I couldn't find nothing about how there's hardly anything there.

If you look online, look for PRI power look of all the, I mean, been in the Guinness World Records. You would expect there to be something, but there's nothing there. There's nothing. 

Pritpal Thind: We, we hope to change that soon, but really, I've been on a journey. I'm sort of like maybe, uh, an optimist. I'm a perfectionist in a certain way that I want to, before I start telling you how good we are.

I wanna make it really good. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah. 

Pritpal Thind: So I think that journey has never finished, so I think we are nearly there. Yeah. So you might get some marketing bump. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah, yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah. But, um, the idea is just to, you know, as it were. Be a friend in the pharmacy space. Yeah. Where people, when they talk to me, I answer them.

And that's my marketing. 

Boo Dhaliwal : So your, your marketing is, somebody talks to you and you give them the answer. Yeah. I think, I know you are a pharmacist and I know you're an IT guy, but you might need some, uh, advice on the sales and marketing side of it. 

Pritpal Thind: I, I'll admit that, that, that. Look. I 

Boo Dhaliwal : I love that though. You ask me a question, I'll give you the answer.

What's your problem? 

Pritpal Thind: What I'm saying is, if, if, if they have a mar, if they need to know about Sono, they ask and you'll tell them. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Yeah, 

Pritpal Thind: yeah. Simple as that. 

Boo Dhaliwal : That's it for, uh, today's, uh, episode. Thank you so much pri Powell for coming onto the, uh, pharmacy Planet Podcast. 

Pritpal Thind: Thank you. Thank you for having us here and appreciate, uh, you giving us the opportunity, but.

You know, uh, come, come over and see. Sonar. 

Boo Dhaliwal : We are gonna have to, gonna have to. 

Pritpal Thind: Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Thanks guys. 

Pritpal Thind: Like subscription, 

Boo Dhaliwal : like subscribe and share. Not like that. Why do you always have to, you don't have to say these things. You know, Ash, people know that they've gotta like, subscribe and share or, and if they want to like, or subscribe and share, they're gonna do it anyway without me asking them to do it.

Do you know what I mean? If anything, it feels, it feels tacky. Yeah. Don't you think? 

Pritpal Thind: No, I think, you know, you know, they're the experts, so if they tell us, let's do it, you know? No, 

Boo Dhaliwal : you can't listen to 

Pritpal Thind: them. Yeah. 

Boo Dhaliwal : Do you know what I mean? 

Pritpal Thind: I mean, they don't mind if I look that make me 

Boo Dhaliwal : look like an idiot. Happily, 

Pritpal Thind: I have have zero idea of what to do in the marketing space.

But yeah, 

Boo Dhaliwal : all you have to say is like, subscribe and share. I think that's it. That's all. That's it. Right?