Beyond the pharmacy: Dis-Chem is reimagining the future of healthcare retail in SA

Aliyah Allie, executive head at X, bigly labs by Dis-Chem and Rui Morais, CEO of Dis-Chem Pharmacies. Image supplied

Through technology, data and customer-centred innovation, the company is building a connected healthcare ecosystem designed to make healthcare simpler, more accessible and more personalised.

Aliyah Allie, executive head at X, bigly labs by Dis-Chem explains how the retailer is reshaping healthcare experiences for South Africans.

X, bigly labs is Dis-Chem’s dedicated, homegrown innovation hub and digital engine and is tasked with transforming the pharmacy chain into an integrated healthcare provider,

Dis-Chem has traditionally been known as a retail pharmacy brand. What drove the shift toward positioning the business as a broader healthcare authority?

South Africa faces a significant healthcare challenge. Government continues to make important progress, but addressing the country's healthcare needs requires collaboration across the public and private sectors.

While many healthcare startups are introducing innovative solutions, their impact is often limited by scale.

Businesses like Dis-Chem have both the reach and the capability to make a meaningful contribution. Historically, our focus has been centred on pharmacy and retail.

Today, we see an opportunity to bring together all the healthcare assets we've built over the years to help solve broader healthcare challenges.

The reality is that South Africans don't experience healthcare in neat categories. People move between pharmacies, clinics, medical advice, wellness services and chronic care, often with very little connection between those touchpoints.

Our ambition is to connect those experiences. By combining our trusted pharmacy expertise, clinics, insurance offerings, rewards programme and long-standing customer relationships, we're evolving from being a destination for products into a healthcare partner that supports people throughout their everyday health journey.

At X, bigly labs by Dis-Chem, our role is to build the technology, data and customer experience foundations that make this vision possible.

Becoming a healthcare authority isn't about positioning or marketing. It's something that has to be earned through trust, accessibility, consistency and genuinely helping customers know what to do next.

The Melrose Arch Health Hub represents a new kind of healthcare environment. What customer insights shaped its development?

The Health Hub was inspired by a simple observation: customers increasingly expect experiences to be seamless, intuitive and easy to navigate.

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That expectation becomes even more important when it comes to healthcare. People are often visiting because they aren't feeling well or because they're caring for someone they love. In those moments, complexity becomes a barrier.

Customers don't think in terms of departments or business units. They simply want to understand what they need, where they should go, what it will cost and what the next step is.

At X, bigly labs, we constantly question existing assumptions and explore how healthcare experiences can be redesigned for modern consumers. Many healthcare systems were built for a very different era. Consumer expectations, technology and service models have all evolved.

The Health Hub gave us the opportunity to ask ourselves a fundamental question: if we were designing healthcare from scratch today, what would it look like?

The result isn't simply a new retail format. It's a healthcare experience designed around real customer behaviour, recognising that every person's health journey starts differently and that people value reassurance, guidance and simplicity when making important decisions.

AI and data are transforming healthcare globally. How is Dis-Chem using these technologies to create more personalised experiences?

For us, technology should make healthcare more useful, not more complicated.

At X, bigly labs, we're focused on using AI and data to connect the many signals customers already generate across their healthcare journey, from pharmacy purchases and clinic visits to wellness interactions, insurance products and digital engagement.

By connecting those touchpoints, we can better understand customer context, anticipate needs, recommend relevant services, support follow-up care and make the next step in the healthcare journey much clearer.

Technology also enables us to identify broader health patterns, improve service design and support more proactive approaches to care.

Importantly, AI should never replace healthcare professionals. It should strengthen the work of pharmacists, clinic teams and healthcare advisors by providing better insights and more timely information so they can continue doing what they do best: caring for people.

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Healthcare innovation often sounds compelling in theory but can be difficult to implement. How do you ensure innovation is grounded in operational reality?

Innovation has to begin with understanding how people actually behave, not how we think they should behave.

That means spending time understanding customer decision-making, observing where friction occurs and recognising how frontline teams actually work.

We also need to consider practical realities such as pharmacy workflows, clinic capacity, operational processes, compliance requirements, data quality and employee training.

At X, bigly labs, design, technology and operations work together from the outset.

We constantly ask ourselves whether an idea solves a genuine customer problem, whether customers will easily understand it, whether frontline teams can deliver it consistently, and whether our systems can support it at scale.

Ultimately, innovation only matters if it measurably improves the customer experience.

Building healthcare solutions across a large retail organisation requires collaboration between many business units. What have been the biggest opportunities and challenges?

Healthcare naturally cuts across multiple functions within the business.

Pharmacy, clinics, insurance, digital, technology, marketing, customer experience, operations and compliance all contribute different perspectives.

One of the biggest challenges is aligning those different capabilities around a single customer journey rather than individual departmental priorities.

At the same time, that's also our greatest opportunity.

Dis-Chem's national footprint, trusted healthcare expertise, digital capabilities, operational infrastructure and customer insights give us the ability to create highly integrated healthcare experiences that few organisations can replicate.

At X, bigly labs, our role is to explore how those capabilities can work together to create entirely new customer experiences rather than simply improving existing ones.

How do you see healthcare retail evolving in South Africa over the next few years?

Healthcare retail is moving beyond transactional interactions towards connected care.

Consumers increasingly expect healthcare to be more accessible, affordable, preventative and easier to navigate. They also expect digital and physical experiences to complement one another rather than operate separately.

That doesn't mean healthcare will become entirely digital.

Trust remains central to healthcare, and many customers will always value expert human guidance, particularly when making decisions about their own wellbeing or that of their families.

The future lies in combining digital convenience with trusted healthcare expertise.

For Dis-Chem, that represents a significant opportunity.

Our pharmacy heritage, nationwide clinic infrastructure, customer relationships and growing technology capabilities through X, bigly labs position us well to help shape what everyday healthcare can become in South Africa.

Our focus is ultimately on making healthcare more connected, more intuitive and more centred around the needs of the customer.