Ms Patel’s appointment will accelerate plans to bring Mr Nahaboo’s £1bn “Pharmacy of the Future” vision to life, CEO and founder Feisal Nahaboo said in a statement today (March 1).

Ms Patel is “widely renowned” for her “commercial acumen and ability to ‘join the dots’ to create opportunities for innovation and strategic partnerships”, Mr Nahaboo added.

She has more than 25 years of experience in helping healthcare organisations – including Lloydspharmacy, where she worked as director of procurement managing a budget of £1.4 billion across all retail procurement.

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Ms Patel’s “extensive experience” in the pharmacy sector means “transformational change is not new to her” and her expertise will help Alitam “implement wide-ranging cost-efficiencies and deliver new revenue streams to the pharmacy sector and beyond”, Mr Nahaboo added.

As an Alitam board executive, Ms Patel will work to identify suitable suppliers of preventative healthcare services, implement new services, and help improve the company’s bottom line.

“Super pharmacy” vision

Ms Patel said that she will bring her “experience and know-how to the table”.

“I’m so excited to be able to support the radical change our pharmacy industry urgently requires,” she said.

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“The healthcare sector continues to face unprecedented demand on its finite resources and Alitam’s vision and model creates a ground-breaking platform for transformational change to deliver high quality, patient-centric services to our communities.”

Ms Patel will work with Ms Nahaboo and his team to “make change happen at pace” and support the pharmacy group “in better healthcare and wellbeing to all”, she added.

Before leaving Avicenna in September last year, Ms Patel sat down with C+D to explain how she had supported the group at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.