As the Future of Pharmacy Marches On, Pharmacists Must Embrace IT’s Intelligence

Guest Columnist: Travis C. A. Brooks, Pharm.D. candidate

Pharmacy is being revolutionized

by the fruits of its labor. The godfather of technology, information technology and its poster child artificial intelligence has forever changed our future in the practice of pharmacy. When we think about where we are at this moment in time, we have to first remember to thank and pay homage to our forerunners in pharmacy practice. Without the efforts of our predecessors advancing the field of pharmacy, the industry would not be at the level it has grown to today.

Advancements in both IT and AI paved the way for the field of pharmacy to continue to grow. 1 When IT was first introduced, most of the pharmacists couldn’t even fathom the idea of technology helping them. As the years passed, technology advanced and now there are numerous technological trajectories in the modern practice of pharmacy. It is up upand-coming pharmacists new to the field to embrace everTravis C.A. Brooks, Pharm.D. candidate

changing technology. So, what is our role in being a pharmacist? Is our primary role and professional title more than just filling a prescription? The answer is yes in a huge way! Our role and scope of practice more than meets the public eye. A pharmacist must provide: health assessments and screenings, immunizations and vaccines, medication therapy management services, patient education and counseling, and patient care plans in collaboration with a physician to ensure that each patient is receiving the utmost quality care. 2 Now, with all that being said, a pharmacist cannot do all this alone. We must have help and we must work together.

It is worth noting that pharmacy technicians play a critical role assisting pharmacists. Pharmacy techs are much appreciated by pharmacists and patients alike. Information technology has given pharmacists a whole new outlook and new methods to provide the absolute highest quality of patient care. The role of information technology in pharmacy practice is dynamic and not likely to lose any relevance. I believe we will see an increase in efficiency as we are able to

execute our daily tasks while improving our access to vital information necessary to complete our mission.

Pharmacists undoubtedly faced daunting tasks along the way. New technology means there’s a learning curve, but those learning curves have been to our benefit and prepared pharmacists for the future. Information technology is now a staple, entrenched into the lives of all human beings. Today, we can use two new technological advancements that provide a way for pharmacies to work with greater confidence and efficiency. 3 These innovations ensure that each patient is receiving the correct medication in their prescribed dosages. Digital imaging allows the display label of a medication to be digitized on screen as part of a multistep process by a pharmacist, streamlining the verification process during dispensing procedures. 4 Machines assist the pharmacist in the dosage count for certain medication dispenses. IT/AI advancements also ensure our patients will be receiving an enhanced form of accuracy in lieu of the more antiquated pill counting, which provides a comfort shared by and beneficial for both the patient and pharmacist.

Innovation in AI can create more effective pharmaceutical medications. This has been a hot trend in modern pharmacy. Throughout thousands of combined hours of research, I feel that most people do not comprehend the fantastic implications of all the new pharmaceutical IT/AI advances. The greatest positive implication is that we can rely successfully upon a computer system to interpret millions of pages of scientific data, facts and literature. AI can help researchers and pharmaceutical companies speed up the entire process of developing new medications during the required drug clearance process. 5 The particular computer system leading the race is the IBM ® Watson, which has a platform known as IBM ® Clinical Development that covers an entire study from start to finish. IBM’s broadly innovative IT/AI platform features solutions that can gather, organize, analyze and report data for any type, size or phase of a clinical trial from any place in the world. 6 As such, artificial intelligence will be used in drug development and enhancements. We can only expect even greater positive professional outcomes.

Another major advancement is 3D printable medications. This innovation paved the way for pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of manufacturing medications. The first company to do this was Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, which created the first-ever FDA approved, 3D-printed medication — Spritam. This process allows for the pill to be porous enough to dissolve quickly while still delivering an efficient amount of dosage to each patient. This advancement led to an extraordinary and fresh prescription drug landscape, as well as creating a path for a bright future ahead in the pharmaceutical industry.

It is worth noting that, besides the use of AI for the creation of medications or use during sequencing, we can now also utilize AI to gather data. Gathering data can lead to a much safer and smoother process, and help patients gain access to much needed prescription-based health care. It is the willingness to fathom what capabilities we have yet to create and eventually access at our fingertips. AI has given us an avenue

that so many medical professionals at one point in time never believed to totally transform our mobile devices for a patient’s health care, such as with our various new mobile heath applications and an introduction to virtual health care systems.

Mobile health applications are providing more ways than ever before to gather relevant data for the use of clinical trials. These apps are now being recommended to patients nationwide to provide precise information on a patient’s health in real time! This is why newly developed medical apps have been used to study diseases like Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, breast cancer, asthma and cardiovascular disease. 7 Pharmaceutical companies and others are finally recognizing this advancement as a helpful and crucial necessity across clinical research models, especially as the threat of harmful diseases become more pervasive. Prescription apps help facilitate the development of new medications and use data in a way that studies each in order to guide researchers down a shorter, more direct path of creating the most beneficial medicine for patients who have any of the pervasively advancing viral and bacterial pathologically life-threatening diseases. 8

We must gain clinical knowledge so that pharmacists, researchers and health care professionals can provide a more effective preventative care treatment plan or be able to depend upon better management of our patients for them to enjoy a much-improved quality of life. The more that can be discovered from tracking a patient’s disease, the more doors are opened up in more ways than ever before imagined. AI/IT production and advancement gives pharmacists an increased opportunity to more swiftly access more and better knowledge to improve our necessary treatments with more highly advanced modalities to be used in improved patient health care outcomes. Some of these applications include the Cardiogram’s Deep Heart appknown to aid in the detection of diabetes and other medical conditions. 9 The MyStudies app is FDA-approved to facilitate the collection of real-world evidence through mobile devices, and it is becoming widely known for aiding in increasing the interpretation of and diversity of new information research for clinical trials. 10 Another app is Sensely, an avatar-based mobile phone chatbot app linked with patient self-monitoring to enhance access to health knowledge while building trust, which has decreased hospitalization, readmissions and monitoring costs. 11 This is hugely beneficial preventative health care news.

Across America and the globe, IT/AI usage has shifted the spectrum of our profession. More and more, we are relying on digital and virtual technology. IT/AI is expected to balloon across e-commerce and mobile channels for marketing, which will produce stiff competition across the pharmaceutical industry. The transcendence of virtual health care will be seen in uses such as apps, online prescription forms, patient portals and delivery services. These all are sure to be the future of procuring medications for manufacturing, refill requests and automated patient deliveries. Even technology such as telemedicine (defined as the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology) has now expanded pharmacy services across the internet. Individual patients who are willing and able can ulti-

mately utilize this model for point-of-care access to add the convenience of quickly having a pharmacist be immediately accessible at any time. This is especially accommodating to the patient when they need help, medical/medication advice and personalized, specific treatments in the most desperate of times.

Pharmacists in remote locations can fill prescriptions that can then be mailed to the patient’s location. This specialized modality for care is especially advantageous for both the pharmacist and patient alike in places like Alaska, due to its sparsely populated demographic areas. Looking forward, a futuristic model of telemedicine will be automated dispensing systems which will be remotely located with a pharmacist only one telecommunications link away from being connected with a patient. This will enable more direct access of care for a patient whose pharmacy might be closed after hours or which may provide access for those in rural areas without a pharmacy located for miles.

Moreover, (if not all) pharmacy experts say that data tracking and the management of the data is one of the single most daunting tasks regarding all health systems’ pharmacies. Pharmacies must ensure they are conforming to the use of fundamental methods and facets of acquiring data as it is an intrinsic part of the health care system. Pharmacies should be able to use their data to make sharper, quicker and smarter decisions for patients. Data must be made more efficient. Elevating our use of data will resolve problems in pharmacies such as slashing the cost of managing numerous IT systems and expanding research and the ability to accurately design treatment plans for the best patient outcomes. An idea would be to entirely integrate all the health systems into a single platform. This could save time in performing day-to-day activities because it would assist in optimizing inventories, generating more accurate reports and managing individualized consumer/customer loyalty programs.

Pharmacies will progressively increase the use of analytics such as electronic health records systems for the benefit of the overall health of the patient and results in a chance to provide better services to its customers. Additionally, pharmacies will use business analytics to help identify a patient’s course of action or status and be able to actively improve outcomes. There is definitely a multifaceted, scientifically sound approach needed in order to move forward like researchers are hoping to. Pharmacies will be positively impacted as patients continue to embrace technologies that give them a tremendous sense of control with more access to pertinent information. For instance, technologies that provide patient awareness of drug-pricing disparities between retail pharmacies will influence a patient’s decision on where to get a prescription filled. So, if our patients are already embracing this shift in technological advancements, then nothing should prevent us within the pharmacy world from recognizing IT/AI as tools to reach for excellence.

What is holding us back from riding this wave? If we do not adapt to these exciting, but daunting advances, then we will choose to be suspended in time when compared to the more courageous adventurous few seeing the positive elements of IT and AI. Perhaps we all might consider choosing what is best for our patients. IT/AI is proving to be the future of the pharmacy profession — and for the health care industry as a whole. It is important to not forget our humanitarian reasons for choosing a career in health care in the first place. From those reasons comes a technological system of advancements. The key to unlocking our potential is to recognize IT/ AI and to begin to fully embrace its benefits. It is to our advantage as pharmacists — so we can continue our oath to provide the best quality of care to our patients.

Travis C. A. Brooks is a doctor of pharmacy candidate at Florida A&M University. At the time of submission, he was an advanced pharmacy practice intern at the Florida Pharmacy Association. He aspires to help contribute to pharmacy practice, his community and the patients in society that will need harmacists to uphold the standard of excellence to be suitable for all mankind. He says, “You have got to carry a vision in pharmacy and deliver the kind of leadership that is empowering towards others. Ensure this is done with full integrity and compassion so that others reach for excellence.”

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