Boots has launched a new prescription text reminder service to “improve medicines adherence”.

Patients who sign up to the service will be texted when the reordering date for their repeat prescription is coming up to help them manage repeat medication “more effectively”.

Boots has introduced the new service to build on its Prescriptions Plus Online service, which sends email reminders for repeat prescriptions. It said 43% of its online repeat prescriptions are reordered through this.

Read more: Boots launches GLP-1 ‘support zones’ in over 220 stores

Some 30-50% of adults don’t take their medicine as prescribed as patients are “forgetting to take” medication, according to a report from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

Boots pharmacy director Anne Higgins said that missing medication “can have a real impact on a person's health” and the Prescriptions Plus service helps the customer journey “from order to collection of prescriptions”.

“This service gives customers access to real time order tracking, integration with the NHS app, free delivery and now text message re-order reminders, making medication easier to manage than ever before,” she said.

Read more: Pharmacies ‘essential’ to high street, say three-quarters of Brits

It comes as antidepressants were added to the new medicine service (NMS) under the 2025/26 funding deal, but C+D learnt that small independent pharmacies faced a financial hit of thousands of pounds per month after reforms in that contract banned NMS subcontracting.

Last year, the Royal College of Pharmacy revealed in its policy on artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmacy that there are opportunities for AI to support medicines adherence.