Table 6 Key recommendations for future national implementation strategies within the community pharmacy setting

1. Conduct more robust piloting of innovations to overcome operational issues, for example, using “bottom-up” techniques. Phased implementation strategies may facilitate scale-up, whereby innovations are tested and iteratively re-designed in gradually larger settings. This could ensure innovations are ready for mass application by testing their feasibility and appropriateness in different contexts [17, 116, 117].

2. Promote whole-team involvement with innovations to overcome resource barriers such as time and workload constraints.

3. Conduct pre-implementation exploration to identify training needs, and to predict pharmacy staff acceptance of innovations by considering if the innovation poses any of the advantages and incentives identified within this review.

4. Develop more thorough stakeholder engagement strategies to overcome barriers relating to acceptance of external healthcare professionals and raise general public awareness of innovations and acceptance through emphasis of intended benefits.