Pharmacy Edge 2018
Artificial Intelligence in Pharma Darshan Kulkarni Pharm.D, MS, Esq and Christopher Makosiej (Expected PharmD in 2018)
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) predicts a surplus of 50,000 pharmacists in 2025, due to colleges overproducing pharmacists alone. This HRSA prediction supports that there is a bleak job market for current and future pharmacists. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) may further exacerbate the situation.
A prescriber is a healthcare professional who can write a prescription.
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What is Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence aims to enable the development of computers that are able to do things normally done by people. Such AI typically uses methodologies including fuzzy logic, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, and swarm intelligence to achieve its goals. The question is, however: Can an artificial intelligence (AI) replace humans in healthcare in general and pharmacy in particular?
Who is a Healthcare Practitioner (HCP)? To understand the potential roles that an AI can play, one must first evaluate the roles it may look to augment and replace in healthcare. Healthcare practitioners (HCPs) may be divided into prescribers and dispensers. A prescriber is a healthcare professional who can write a prescription. These prescribers are responsible for assessing a patient’s health and for making clinical decisions about how to manage the patient’s condition, including by prescribing medication. Prescribers may include medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, dentists and others. In the context of medication therapy management, once the Prescriber places an order for medication the dispenser, in this case a pharmacist, is responsible for being the medication therapy expert and is therefore responsible
to review orders placed by Prescribers. The pharmacist is responsible to detect and evaluate potential therapeutic incompatibilities. Other pharmacists may then be called on to dispense medications. These medications are appropriately compounded, packaged, and labeled to ensure that they are safely and correctly delivered to a patient. While an AI could certainly aid, and sometimes replace a Prescriber, this write-up focuses on AI in the context of a dispenser like a pharmacist. Error Rate Unfortunately, the process of medical therapy management is fraught with errors. According to the Institute of Medicine, between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths may result each year from medical errors in hospitals alone. Of these, more than 7,000 deaths are related to medications Medication errors can occur in determining the