Leading the Change in Pharmacy by Enabling Technologies

Over the past decade, pharmaceutical care has had significant strides in its delivery model paradigm that coincided with a parallel, yet speedy, evolution of pharmacy technologies. Pharmacy leaders have noticed the rise of utilizing mobile devices, clinician-centric solutions, supply chain integration, interoperability, advanced clinical decision support, artificial intelligence, and mixed reality aides.

Some of the questions that pharmacy leaders may ask: Which path is the right one for me? When do we get involved? What change should I expect? How can I get the buy-in from my C-Suite? The answers to these questions start with trying to find the goals and objectives you’re trying to achieve and over what period.

With mobile technologies, access of care is improved by multi-fold. Not only hand-held devices would enable healthcare providers easily deliver services to a broader population, they also enable more patients to seek healthcare at a more convenient setup. Tele-health, remote pharmacy consulting, and inventory management are few products with an established return on investment (ROI), and with break-even points as low as 6 months post implementation. There is no better time than now to start, or expand, on mobility-empowered pharmacy services to maximize patient safety and institutional revenue, both inpatient and outpatient.

Another goal an institution should consider is predictability of future pharmacy patterns. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in handy and plays a critical role in differentiating how successful, and competitive, an organization can be. Utilizing AI and predictive analytics in pharmaceutical care helps organizations predict patterns of drug spend, readmissions, inventory levels, pharmacy workload, and likelihood of pharmaceutical care success in target, and specific, patient populations. Expanding these solutions to the healthcare continuum creates a synergy that amplifies benefits realized in an exponential manner.

Integrating all pieces of pharmacy technologies is crucial for efficiency. While integrating and interfacing are different terms with the former indicating a broader operational and functional capacity as compared to a technical one, many pharmacy leaders still miss the larger picture intended here. 

Integrating pharmacy components covers workflow changes, end user experience, patient satisfaction, and operational, clinical, and financial excellence. It’s very important for pharmacy leaders to identify and act upon the existing silos in their institutions, and within pharmacy that prevent such integration. This typically starts by bringing multidisciplinary internal, and/or external, experts together to initiate brainstorming. A gap analysis is then performed, and action plan identified. The last step is establishing budgeting, timeline and resource needs to achieve the desired outcome(s), and assigning a pharmacy champion for the initiative

Vendor selection is another critical step. A standard methodology usually compares various vendors’ services per a geographical area. Peer experience and feedback, scalability of products, functionality, customer service, pricing, and contracting terms are few factors that pharmacy leaders should consider before hiring a specific technology vendor. Most vendors do allow a pilot phase at no or reduced cost that institutions should take advantage of. This, of course, needs to be weighed against required resources that the institution itself is willing to commit for the project timespan.

Proposing meaningful and impactful changes should be part of any pharmacy leader’s agenda when meeting with C-Suite officials or institutional stakeholders. A well-prepared, well-thought project goes long way with gathering end user feedback and addressing pain points for clinicians and providers at the point of care. This is crucial in order to receive the needed stakeholder buy-in, and before heading to the board room. Presenting a positive ROI with operational and clinical buy-in will need to be aligned with the longer vision of the organization. Understanding and building upon this vision enable pharmacy leadership to become more successful and impactful in advancing health- and pharmaceutical care altogether.