Exclusive Interview With HubRx: Karl Wooldridge, Operations Director

Welcome to the ninth of Dakota’s exclusive customer interviews. 

This time, we had the pleasure of speaking with Karl Wooldridge, Operations Director at HubRx, to find out how Dakota has worked with him and his Team as their incumbent printer label supplier.

HubRx is a relatively newly-formed company which helps to transform community pharmacy through the development of the UK’s first state-of-the-art centralised automated dispensing facility, uniquely designed for, and dedicated to, independent pharmacies. 

On a mission to help minimise dispensing times in order to level the playing field with the multiples, HubRx offers a new way for pharmacies to re-engineer their processes, contract out their repeat dispensing and therefore deliver higher value clinical services, whilst ensuring that all clinical checks, nominations and patient relationships remain with the pharmacy itself. 

Capacity creation is the key component of the solution; helping to free up pharmacists’ time and consulting space thanks to a highly-automated large-scale centralised hub for the assembly of a majority of prescriptions.

In 2023, HubRx acquired The Pharmacy Group, an established business operating across Yorkshire, thus opening up an opportunity to expand its clinical services to the high street. The Group was subsequently rebranded to Pharmacy+Health following the acquisition.

Read on to find out more.

1. What are your main areas of responsibility within HubRx?

I have many areas of responsibility within HubRx, but first and foremost, my main role is to ensure that the overall operations and procedures are cost effective, whilst supervising KPIs in order to minimise losses and guarantee high levels of productivity. I am also responsible for the automation and service contracts within our warehouse and as well as its processes within the pharmacies, which include overseeing stock management and supply chain demands, while taking into account logistics and product usage.

2. How long have you been a Dakota customer?

HubRx is a relatively new business and has been a Dakota customer since I joined, however I worked with Dakota for several years prior within a previous job role, so I was familiar with their products and services.

3. How did you first come into contact with Dakota?

As mentioned, I was first introduced to Dakota during my previous job role and have worked with them ever since, thanks to their quality of customer care, high-calibre products and competitive pricing model.

4. Which products are you currently using?

We are currently using high-performance perforated labels for application to patients’ prescription medicines. The other labels we use are for printing patient details and barcodes for identification. We also use a variety of pre-printed barcode labels for stock tracking and some A5 labels for customer branding.

5. How are the products used within your facility?

The labels are highly specialised and are applied using robotic procedures due to the high degree of automation within the warehouse. It is essential that the label rolls supplied are constructed to a precise specification; they must be single rolls with no joins in the labels which helps to ensure that we very rarely get a bad print, a misprint or poor label application to the product. This is critical due to the high speed labelling within our warehouse – every label printed needs to be right first time, every time.

6. What type of product were you using before you deployed your Dakota product solution?

HubRx has only ever used labels from Dakota and based on my past experience with the company, I did not look anywhere else for our needs. Historically I have found that with labels from other suppliers there can be slippage in their label rolls, which meant that incomplete information was being printed. There are multiple legal requirements in terms of the information which has to be printed on a medicine prescription label in the UK, so any missing information on a label means that it has to be reprinted. This scenario was unfortunately commonplace prior to working with Dakota, however since making the switch, the number of misprints has dramatically reduced to near zero.

7. What have been the main benefits you have experienced/achieved as a result of your Dakota product solution?

As mentioned above, Dakota’s labelling solution has dramatically reduced incorrect and incomplete label prints, which is critical when taking patient safety into account, not to mention disruption within our supply chain process. 

The quality of the labels supplied is also really high, which ultimately helps to save money on printheads in the long run. Not only does this help with overall expenditure, it also allows for scalability, since the right information is printed first time, every time, dramatically reducing error and rejection rates.

Working with Dakota is also so easy – our Account Manager, Julie Chamberlain, is always on the other end of the phone should any issues arise, and the company as a whole is very obviously geared to providing exceptional levels of customer care and service.

8. Why did you choose to work with Dakota?

As a business, we chose to work with Dakota because they supply high quality products at competitive prices, all wrapped up in a fantastic customer service offering! Having experienced working with Dakota during my previous role, I had no hesitation in recommending them when I joined HubRx.

9. Do you have any plans to extend your Dakota solution further or do you have any new applications which you are currently considering?

We may very well look at extending our contract with Dakota to also include label provision to our high street chain of pharmacies – it would be great to expand our working contract with Dakota to include these also. Watch this space!

10. How would you rate your experience with Dakota?

I would rate our experience with Dakota as excellent! The ability to just pick up the phone to speak with our Account Manager is a definite bonus, and the responsive and reactive nature to any of our queries is always recognised and appreciated. I would not hesitate to recommend Dakota to anyone, regardless of the nature of your business. If you need labels, you need Dakota!