Healthcare

Answering pharmacy calls without adding headcount.

A UK pharmacy technology venture needed one AI receptionist to handle routine calls across twenty community pharmacies. SDTC Digital built a white-labelled, multi-tenant voice platform with store-specific answers, clinical guardrails, and 24/7 coverage.

Pharmacy coverage
20 stores
Answer time target
Under 3 seconds
Call coverage
24/7
New-store onboarding
Under 15 minutes

Project overview

A UK pharmacy technology venture needed to manage routine calls across a twenty-store customer group without adding a central reception team. Enquiries about opening hours, services, appointments, medication availability, and prescription status were taking staff away from in-store customers.

SDTC Digital built a white-labelled AI receptionist that answers each pharmacy's calls using its own name and information. Every store has a separate knowledge base, call history, and administrative record.

Clinical questions are transferred into a human follow-up workflow rather than answered by the agent. Non-technical administrators can update information, review calls, and onboard new pharmacies without engineering support.

Model
White-labelled, multi-tenant
Coverage
24/7, every store
Content owner
Non-technical pharmacy admin staff

Project details

Platform model
White-labelled, multi-tenant
Call coverage
24 hours a day
Content owners
Pharmacy administration staff
Store separation
Independent data and knowledge

The challenges

  1. 01Routine phone enquiries were consuming counter staff time throughout the working day.
  2. 02Peak periods created hold queues, while calls outside opening hours went unanswered.
  3. 03Covering twenty stores through additional reception staff would be difficult to scale.
  4. 04Every location required accurate answers based on its own services, stock information, and opening hours.
  5. 05Non-technical staff needed to update information without raising support requests.
  6. 06Clinical and dosage questions required clear boundaries and human follow-up.
A pharmacy assistant and a customer looking together at a medicine carton in a bright pharmacy aisle, both smiling

Project goals

  • Provide 24/7 call coverage across twenty community pharmacies.
  • Answer calls in each pharmacy's name using location-specific information.
  • Respond to routine questions without giving clinical or dosage advice.
  • Allow non-technical staff to manage and publish knowledge-base content.
  • Record, transcribe, summarise, and connect calls to follow-up actions.
  • Onboard new pharmacies in under fifteen minutes.

What we built

SDTC Digital developed a multi-tenant voice reception platform covering calls, knowledge management, appointments, messages, and pharmacy administration.

01

Store-specific voice reception

The agent handles routine enquiries, appointments, messages, and after-hours calls using each pharmacy's identity.

02

Clinical guardrails and escalation

The agent avoids clinical advice and routes unanswered medical questions to pharmacy staff for review.

03

Pharmacy knowledge management

Each pharmacy manages its own services, medications, opening hours, and frequently asked questions.

04

Call records and follow-up

Calls are recorded, transcribed, summarised, and linked to resulting appointments or staff messages.

05

Administration and onboarding

A four-screen admin panel manages pharmacies, knowledge, calls, and onboarding in under fifteen minutes.

I wish every software developer were like them. The team is open and honest, and I absolutely trust them.
Frank KroomCEO of BeMup

The Caller/User Journey

01

Call the pharmacy

The voice agent answers in the pharmacy's name within the targeted response time.

02

Identify the request

The caller asks about services, opening hours, stock, appointments, or another supported topic.

03

Retrieve store-specific information

The agent searches only the selected pharmacy's knowledge base.

04

Respond or escalate

Routine enquiries receive an answer, while clinical or unsupported questions are passed to staff as messages.

05

Record the outcome

The platform stores the recording, transcript, summary, and any appointment or follow-up request.

The Thinking Behind the Platform

  1. 01Guardrails first: Defined what the agent must not answer before expanding its capabilities.
  2. 02Store-level isolation: Separated knowledge, calls, records, and administration for every pharmacy.
  3. 03Plain-language management: Allowed pharmacy staff to write information naturally while the agent paraphrases it during calls.
  4. 04One-click publishing: Enabled administrators to correct and publish answers without engineering support.
  5. 05Existing staff workflows: Sent appointments and messages into familiar follow-up processes.
  6. 06Traceable conversations: Preserved call recordings, transcripts, summaries, and outcomes for later review.

Tech stack

Kept small on purpose, so the team spends its time on the product rather than the platform.

Voice and UK telephony

  • Retell AI
  • Twilio

Data and hosting

  • Supabase
  • Vercel

Administration

  • Custom multi-tenant web admin panel

Testing and delivery

351

Test cases executed across voice reception, call routing, knowledge retrieval, appointments, messages, administration, and data isolation.

20

Functional modules tested across the voice and administration platform, including store onboarding and cross-pharmacy separation.

97.9%

Overall pass rate across finalised test cases, with remaining defects tracked through the standard resolution process.

100%

Pass rate across medication checks, appointment booking, message-taking, and cross-pharmacy isolation, with onboarding meeting the fifteen-minute target.

A pharmacist in a white coat smiling as he takes a medicine carton from a dispensary shelf

Outcomes and Business Impact

  • One AI voice reception platform covers all twenty community pharmacies, answering calls 24/7 without adding a single new hire to a central or store-level reception team.
  • Counter staff spend less time on repetitive enquiries, with clinical questions still routed to pharmacy staff and store-specific answers handled directly.
  • Recorded calls, messages, and appointment requests are connected through to follow-up, so nothing gets lost.
  • Each new pharmacy is fully configured and answering real calls in under fifteen minutes, proven rather than projected.
  • 351 test cases across 20 modules came back at a 97.9% pass rate, with medication checks, appointment booking, message-taking, and cross-pharmacy data isolation all landing at 100%.
The overview, store by store
Every pharmacy and its knowledge-base state
Call logs across the whole network

More work

Every engagement
A clinician on the phone at her laptop, medication jars on the desk beside her

Healthtech

Building an e-prescription platform around trust, access, and scale.

Clinic management and electronic prescribing with eIDAS-compliant signatures, and a pharmacy lookup that needs no account at all.

Two trainees in hard hats laughing over a folder of course paperwork by a window

EdTech

Turning every sale into an enrolment

Shopify and direct checkout feeding a single SCORM platform that provisions accounts, tracks progress and issues certificates unattended.

A site worker crossing a rebar deck on a construction site

Compliance

Turning lab data into review-ready reports

Lab PDFs read automatically, exposure limits checked against the right jurisdiction, and report prose generated with the regulation cited.

Want to handle routine calls without losing human safeguard?

A healthcare voice agent needs more than natural conversation. It needs clear boundaries, accurate local information, secure data separation, and a reliable route back to qualified staff.