Leveraging Technology To Improve Pharmacy Management

HARDWARE TECHNOLOGY Technology has made its way into every aspect of our lives. This is especially true with hospital pharmacies. Today, technology spend is the third most expensive cost in the pharmacy department budget trailing closely behind medication and labor cost. Adoption of technology started about 30 years ago with laser printers, medication dispensing robots, automatic dispensing cabinets (ADC), medication carousels, smart pumps, and similar hardware to perform repetitive tasks and track inventory.

A hardware that will likely become an integral part of the pharmacy in the future is the automated IV compounding system, especially for hazardous medications and for batching of sterile compounding admixtures. It is starting to be used by early adopters and in the next 10 years, there will be improvements in the functionality and reliability. This will drive adoption similar to that of the dispensing robots in hospital pharmacies.

Another hardware that will become an integral part of pharmacies are prescription dispensing machines or “vending machines” where a patient could pick up their prescription without having to interact with a person. The biggest challenge working with the regulatory bodies compliances with patient counseling and education. There will be kiosks in malls and other convenient locations, as well as retails pharmacies.

RFID is another technology that will be an integral part of the pharmacy supply chain from manufacturing, wholesaler, pharmacies, and finally to the inpatients. It is being used in limited spaces such as scanning of medications in kits and trays as well as supermarkets. However, it has greater value and could be applied in every part of the supply chain. An added feature that would further enhance this technology is the ability to track temperature on every medication container.

Software Technology

The current technology that is staring to make its way into the pharmacy space are software and/or applications that are enhancing the decision-making process of the pharmacists.

In essences it is the superpower of the pharmacists with unlimited memory, super-fast processing power, ability to integrate all data, and ability to work 24/7 with high accuracy. The development of these products is made possible with the advancement in artificial intelligence, applications that has the ability to collate big data into a usable format, faster computing power, and more data storage capacity, and security of health information.

As a pharmacist and a pharmacy leader this is a very exciting time in the pharmacy profession and at the same time challenging to keep up with the new advancement. A new aspect of my job is accepting meeting invitations from outside vendors to learn about their new technology. Some of the technology is in development or not available on the internet because of the propriety nature of the product there is no other sources to learn about the technology than to speak with the representative of the company. Additionally, networking with your Group Purchasing Organization, wholesalers, and other professional groups who learned about the technology through their networks are other sources of information.

Lastly, technology spend is rarely cheap. In order to onboard a product or service it often requires capital budget spending. The timeline for capital budget approval could take several years. Therefore, one must be a strategic and think about the operation of the department as far as five to ten years down the road.