Let’s start with how Tribelle began - why did you decide to launch?
Julie Boora: Tribelle was launched in April 2025. I used to work in community pharmacy for many, many years, then I moved into health tech, and then went traveling. And during that period of working in health tech and traveling, I went through the perimenopause and really struggled with trying to join all the dots of different symptoms. And then when I did join the dots and started seeking treatment, I was overwhelmed with information and just didn’t really know who I could trust.
I thought, “I’m a pharmacist and I have clinical information, and there must be so many women like me just struggling to navigate this stage”. Coming out of it now and thriving, I really thought, “I’d love to create something that women can trust, can use to gather information and access medication in the same way that men can access medication online”. I really wanted to create something that I can look back on and be proud of, so that’s how Tribelle evolved for me.
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Sahithi Amaravadi: I am a management consultant by background, and I’ve been working in healthcare and health tech for many, many years. I had my own health issues, and after about 10 years of suffering with heavy periods, etcetera, I went to an ultrasound and was told I have deep infiltrating endometriosis.
The ability to get access to help was so difficult, even though I was surrounded by clinicians as I’d worked in healthcare for so long. It’s kind of similar story to Julie’s, in that it shouldn’t be so difficult to access information or care for women when lots of women experience very similar things.
Which women’s health issues do you feel need addressing as a priority?
SA: We are trying to focus on providing holistic care for women. We know there are lots of other companies providing online treatment that kind of focus on one specific thing, like menopause or fertility, but we want to provide care for women across their lives, whether they’re dealing with heavy periods, or fertility, or perimenopause, or menopause.
JB: One thing to touch on is that we provide GLP-1 medication, and we provide it in a really safe and supportive way. We supply it for men and for women, but we speak to every single person before we issue a prescription, and we can provide them with that opportunity to answer any questions they may have.
They can book a free clinical consultation if they’re uncertain, so we have quite a lot of calls about whether they should titrate up, maintenance, when they’ve stopped and some of those cravings are coming back, what they should do to help manage that.
The services that we provide are much more collaborative with the patient. It’s a very patient-centric approach; we know that women want to be able to talk to someone, want to have access to a clinician and speak to somebody that they can trust.
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What would you say to someone who might argue that for certain women’s health issues, care from a pharmacist might be better in person?
JB: I think it’s about trying to recognise that the pharmacist at the online pharmacy is the same pharmacist you see behind the counter. It’s not a different qualification or a different level of expertise, it’s that same pharmacist with that same knowledge, same experience, same level of expertise, same ability to help.
We are different because our service is what really defines us ... we will speak to customers. We’re not just going to be saying, ‘Here, fill in a form and that’s it’. We have a wonderful clinical team that are happy to talk to patients, so we are different in that way to many other online pharmacies.
Julie, you previously worked as a pharmacy manager for Rowlands. What are the main or most challenging differences between running an online pharmacy and a brick-and-mortar?
JB: I worked at Rowlands for a long time, and I built quite a community there. People would know me and come in. I think that is quite common for a community pharmacy, where people tend to know the pharmacist because they’re always there. They see them through years of their experience, and I would say, even in just the year that we’ve had Tribelle, we have a very similar community.
I think that’s a woman thing, actually, if I’m being really stereotypical. I think women like community and women like familiarity, and they like to speak to someone that they can trust. So we have managed to build that community, and it’s interesting because I would almost say we are almost like hybrid online pharmacy. We do speak to our patients, we do have video consultations with them, they can contact us and we’ll go online and we’ll speak to them about what their issues or concerns are.
Bits that are different are that at the moment we’re restricted in what we can supply. We do have an NHS contract, but we haven’t gone live with it yet, so hopefully in the future. But I think you can tell a lot by supplying people’s medication to see what sort of a broader journey they’re going on, what issues they’re facing. I think that’s probably the biggest difference at the moment.
What age range or demographic are you currently attracting, and is that where you’d like to be?
JB: Maybe 35 and onwards, where you’re maybe going through pregnancy, postpartum or you’ve started seeing some signs of perimenopause trickling in, and with that comes weight gain. I would probably say it’s that demographic and above.
The area that we would really like to be able to address is the younger generation, especially young girls or women going through menstrual issues, because we know that’s really difficult, we know that there’s a stigma involved in talking about things like endometriosis or adenomyosis, and we know that the diagnosis from GPs can take somewhere around nine years.
We know that girls don’t like to talk about heavy bleeding, and there are sexual diseases we know that women are reluctant to talk about. They want to be able to access medication discreetly and confidentially.
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Do your clinicians have specific training or qualifications in women’s health?
JB: We’ve recruited clinicians that really do have an interest in women’s health. Some of it is lived experience, similar to most community pharmacies that can provide guidance and advice. Until you’ve gone through it, you can’t really empathise and understand.
Most of them have lived experience and a passion for it, and they have interest in learning more about it. They do a lot of CPD independently to make sure that they’re on top of all the different things that are available.
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What’s next for Tribelle?
SA: What we’re looking to do in the next year or so is scale, be out there, and be known to more women who need our services and would really benefit from them.
We offer a few different treatment types, but we want to expand that out to about 20 so we can reach a lot more women who need support.
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a pharmacist, and how have you applied it to running your own pharmacy business?
JB: Having gone through perimenopause, I understand how difficult it is to find information that you can trust, and somebody that will listen and understand. I knew it before, but I have recognised even more how important that is.
For anybody who comes to us, whether it’s for weight loss or migraine treatment or genital herpes, they are coming to us in a position of wanting help. And that can be just a conversation, or that can be, “I need access to treatment, but I want to do it safely”. I knew it when I was working in community pharmacy for many, many, many years, but it is more about really tapping into that empathy and understanding.
We want women to thrive, and that’s really what we’re trying to create here, this community of, “let’s support each other to thrive”. We know women have it tough, we are complex creatures, we have so much going on in our lives and our bodies, and we endure so much that it’s unbelievable we don’t have a big women’s health community already.
