If you haven’t yet tinkered around with Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s time to give it a go. AI has an important role in helping community pharmacies like yours build their businesses in numerous ways.
It’s tough to try something new and embrace it without knowing the outcome. Because of that, it’s best to start by assessing your pharmacy needs and your goals. Are you wanting to improve patient interactions, enhance medication dispensing, or create better marketing? Once you understand your objectives, you will be more confident choosing the right AI tools.
By using AI applications, your independent pharmacy can boost its efficiency and provide better patient care. Here’s what else AI can do for you:
Help with Inventory Management: AI can predict demand for medications with high accuracy by analyzing historical data and current trends, enhance stock levels, and automate reordering processes. This guarantees that popular medications are always available, and it reduces the risk of overstocking or stockouts.
Assist with Processing Prescriptions: AI can automate tasks such as data entry, verification of medications, and labeling. This reduces the likelihood of errors and speeds up service.
Support Patient Care: AI can analyze patient data to provide personalized medication recommendations, adherence monitoring, and reminders.
Answer Customer Questions: AI chatbots and virtual assistants can answer common customer inquiries, provide medication information, and schedule appointments. By doing so, patients can receive information that’s timely and accurate.
Detect Fraud and Errors: Prescription fraud is a significant concern. AI algorithms can recognize suspicious activities, such as fraudulent prescriptions and insurance claims. It can also flag potential errors in billing or medication dispensing
Assist with Telehealth: AI can help facilitate telehealth integration by enabling pharmacies to offer virtual consultations along with medication management. Doing so expands the pharmacy’s reach and provides convenience for patients who may be unable to be seen in person.
Help with Clinical Decisions: AI assists pharmacists in making clinical decisions. They do this by providing
evidence-based recommendations, drug interaction alerts, and dosage calculations.
Analyze and Predicts: AI can analyze trends and predict future sales. This helps pharmacies make informed decisions about what to stock and how to price them.
Reduce Costs: With automated routine tasks and improved operational efficiency, AI can help reduce labor costs and other expenses. This increases your pharmacy’s profit margins.
Optimize Online Presence: AI can help in optimizing your online presence, such as your website and social media profiles. AI-powered tools can analyze website traffic, user behavior, and search engine data to enhance search engine to enhance search engine optimization (SEO).
Implement Medication Adherence Program: AI can help you implement medication adherence programs. It does this by sending automated reminders to patients, tracking their medication usage, and offering support.
Drug Interaction Detection: AI is transforming how pharmacies screen for dangerous drug interactions. By using natural language processing techniques, AI systems can analyze prescription information such as medication names, dosages, and durations to rapidly identify potential interaction risks. Many various studies show AI methods can outperform pharmacists in detecting multiple concurrent drug interactions, with accuracy rates upwards of 65-70%. When an interaction is flagged, AI provides contextual details to the pharmacist.
Allergy and Contraindication Checks: By performing thorough allergy and contraindication checks, AI enhances safety. AI tools can instantly cross-reference patient allergies and medical conditions with prescribed medications, flagging any potential issues.
Research from BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making indicates that AI systems can reduce the incidence of allergic reactions and contraindications by up to 40%.
Dosage Increase Based on Patient Data: The ability for AI to increase drug dosages based on individual patient data represents another significant advancement. By analyzing factors such as age, weight, kidney function, genetic markers, comorbidities, and concurrent medications, AI can recommend personalized dosages that maximize efficacy while lessening side effects.
Tailored Patient Education and Counseling: AI systems can provide customized educational materials and counseling sessions that are based on individual patient needs and preferences. AI tools can deliver information in various formats, such as video tutorials, interactive modules, and personalized health tips, being sure that patients get the knowledge they need to manage their conditions effectively.
If carried out strategically and with a lot of thought, AI has potential to drastically reduce the time and cost of drug development, improve patient outcomes, and make operations simpler. The most successful AI strategies will integrate pharmacists’ expertise and insights with the most advanced and innovative technology available.
How to Set Your AI Budget Effectively
- Be sure you understand pricing metrics and structures: You will find that different AI vendors offer varied pricing models, such as token-based or character-based pricing. To budget effectively, you need to understand these models and their scalability
- Thoroughly evaluate AI proposals: Account for all costs when going through AI solutions. This includes finetuning, retraining, and any other necessary changes.
- Negotiate for scalability: Make sure that AI solutions can scale as your pharmacy grows. Check for transparency in pricing and potential hidden costs.
- Track metrics and ROI: Identify key metrics early in the AI adoption process. This will help measure impact and ensure you’re getting the expected return on investment.
- Focus on Cost Savings: AI isn’t just an added expense. It can replace technologies that are outdated and reduce operational costs. AI can handle administrative work, such as reporting and inventory management. This frees up time for pharmacy staff so they can focus on higher-value tasks, such as patient care.
(Source: pharmacytimes.com)
More articles from the March 2025 issue:
- AI-Powered Patient Counseling
- Diagnosing Childhood Asthma
- New Weight-Loss Drugs
- Secondary Stress
- Sight-Loss Support
- PBMs and How They Affect Your Pharmacy
- White Label vs. Private Label Products
- Welcoming AI into Your Pharmacy
A Member-Owned Company Serving Independent Pharmacies
PBA Health is dedicated to helping independent pharmacies reach their full potential on the buy-side of their business. Founded and run by pharmacists, PBA Health serves independent pharmacies with group purchasing services, wholesaler contract negotiations, proprietary purchasing tools, and more.
An HDA member, PBA Health operates its own NABP-accredited warehouse with more than 6,000 SKUs, including brands, generics, narcotics CII-CV, cold-storage products, and over-the-counter (OTC) products — offering the lowest prices in the secondary market.
