so impressed that they took photocopies of all the work Sehar had done. A few months later the GPhC published a 24-page guidance document for online pharmacies.


With the online pharmacy thriving, Sehar realised she had outgrown the role and took the bold step of setting up her own consultancy business with a view to helping other online pharmacies with their governance standards.


“For me the most important thing was patient care and patient safety at the end of every transaction. I could see what was happening in the industry. Online pharmacies were popping up everywhere and there was exponential growth because of COVID but not everybody was compliant. I spent a few years supporting online pharmacies across the country. I loved doing it as it was work that I got to do flexibly around my kids, which was the most important thing,” said Sehar.


Establishing 24HR Pharmacy


By this point Sehar was being approached by GPs and pharmacists to create an online pharmacy in partnership with them. But she soon realised she didn’t need a business partner to set up an online pharmacy as she had enough experience to do it on her own - and that is what she did. By 2024, 24HR Pharmacy, based in Glasgow, was up and running.


“I wanted to create the gold standard online pharmacy that did everything properly and supported their patients. I didn’t want it to be just another transactional online pharmacy. We are the first online pharmacy to have a herbalist and we provide conventional medicine alongside holistic care under one roof.”


A key part of the pharmacy’s infrastructure is a bespoke platform that supports the e-commerce element of the patient’s journey at the front end with a back end that acts as a patient medical record, a clinical system for writing digitally signed prescriptions, generates GP letters and provides identification checks for patients, as well as acting as a library for medical notes and results.


Weight Management and Women’s Health


24HR pharmacy is the first online pharmacy in the country to be B Certified from day one. The pharmacy passed its inspection and was awarded good. Sehar said the inspector told her it was the best standard of an online pharmacy they had ever inspected. Sehar believes there should be tougher enforcement action on online pharmacies that are not compliant in terms of issues like governance and advertising and says, regardless of the size, whoever is not complying should be answerable. This is particularly important to her as one area of healthcare her online pharmacy specialises in is obesity, where supporting patients in the right way is paramount. She is now a clinical speaker for Eli Lilly, an opportunity that came about as a result of the company being so impressed by the wraparound care 24HR Pharmacy provides.


As well as supporting patients with obesity, Sehar’s pharmacy also specialises in providing women’s health support.


“It's a huge area which is underserved by the NHS and has been overlooked for many years and so many women are used to thinking - I will just get on with it, this is what you just have to do with menopause/perimenopause. And actually that's not good enough.”


She said it wasn’t just about providing a prescription, what mattered was how women are coached to be healthier and educated so they can understand what's happening in their bodies. Sehar said active lifestyle and diet interventions can make a massive improvement to women going through the menopause. The pharmacy has an accredited in-house menopause coach that supports women and, as Sehar is a prescriber, they refer to her as and when it is appropriate if they need a HRT prescription.


“The two go hand in hand, you want to get the best from your prescription so you need support on holistic coaching as well. It is not either or. Our herbalist also specialises in women's health too. A lot of women may not be ready for HRT but a lot of herbal medicines can be the answer to support them with their symptoms as they start to go through perimenopause,” she explained.


A Voice for Others


In addition to running 24HR Pharmacy, Sehar now sits on the board of directors for the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).


“Again it was never on my vision board but the opportunity came up and before I knew it I was an NPA board director representing Scotland and all our members. I can remember during my first month thinking - what am I doing here? I am the youngest board member in the association’s history and I don’t have a bricks and mortar pharmacy. There was some push back initially from some members as they didn’t know me and they knew I was from the online pharmacy world,” said Sehar.


“But I have gone in there and I have given it my all and won people around and changed their opinion. I have listened to members and supported them and I have been doing pilot workshops on things like independent prescribing and helping community pharmacies embrace digitalisation and social media. Because even if you have a bricks and mortar pharmacy you need to be online and move with the times because that’s how patients are expecting us to do things.”


Sehar is now also using her platform to advocate for all women working within the pharmacy sector. “Pharmacy is still a very male-dominated industry when it comes to ownership and leadership. But here I am, a mum to two young girls, juggling businesses. I'm working full-time in a consultancy and running an online pharmacy. I am doing a lot. But actually it can be quite a lonely place building a business and I am a pharmacist first and foremost,” she said.


“I was figuring out everything on my own and because it was so lonely I did find it hard. There was nowhere where I could go and get mentorship.”


“We need to give women the confidence and the skills, whether it's through courses or workshops, so that they can then feel confident and believe that they can own a pharmacy..."


Dose of Empowerment


So Sehar started sharing her journey on social media and was surprised by the number of women who would reach out to her saying they were inspired by her journey and wished that they could do something similar. Many didn’t know how to get started and would ask Sehar to mentor them.


“I realised that there's so many other women out there working in pharmacy that have amazing ideas and want that promotion or their own business but they still want flexibility so they can balance it with being a mum. They just don’t have the confidence to start. I thought I need to build this community where these women can all come together and I can support them,” she said.


So at the end of last year, Sehar added another string to her bow and launched Dose of Empowerent, a networking community for women working in healthcare in Scotland. The group meets up regularly and has guest speakers on different topics followed by dinner. “It's just a place for women to just feel safe and feel connected and inspired by each other. That's one of the things that I'm super, super proud of,” she said.


“We need to be better at encouraging each other to go for it and be more like men in some ways. We don’t have to have every single skill set before we say yes to something. We need to breathe that belief into someone else before they have that belief themselves, because often that is the thing that is holding them back,” she said.


Normalising Female Leadership


She said it was important to normalise female leadership roles while making it attractive for women in terms of flexibility, because a lot of leadership roles involved long hours or travel which could sometimes make women feel like they wouldn’t manage it with their home life.


“We need to give women the confidence and the skills, whether it's through courses or workshops, so that they can then feel confident and believe that they can own a pharmacy. It is so important to have that support network.


“And again, if we want to really encourage women to step into leadership roles and business ownership, we need to support them with their health. First and foremost, you have to be healthy and feel your best, because it is only then the confidence comes. So going back to 24HR pharmacy, that was a key focus for us in bringing in women's health.”


Training Others


Sehar’s main priority now is scaling up 24HR pharmacy so it can support more patients and expand more services for niche skills and conditions.


“I also want to start my own training academy for pharmacists because every new pharmacist now qualifying will be an independent prescriber and there is a huge amount for them to learn when it comes to what good looks like,” she said.


She said the academy, which will have on demand learning courses, would also support pharmacists in how to deliver weight management and women’s health to the highest standards.


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