With the launch of ChatGPT, AI tech has become the latest hot topic. With the growth of digital health and virtual care, the pharmacy industry is ripe for innovation. But the pharmacy profession is often focused on “damage control,” and they miss out on the potential benefits of using artificial intelligence. It is time for pharmacists to change their perspective and start asking, “What can we do with AI?”
Pharmacy is Behind the Times
Companies like Uber, Airbnb, Purple, and Hello Fresh disrupted their respective industries by adopting digitalization and commodification of services in the 2000s and early 2010s. Despite the slow adoption rate, the pharmacy is finally waking up to the potential of new technologies, as taken healthcare ten years to catch up to the market with companies like Ro or PillPack which launched only a few years ago. With the advent of these new players, we can expect to see a major shift in how healthcare is delivered in the future.
Want some examples of what AI could do for pharmacy? Ask ChatGPT:
Don’t Try Controlling AI or How People Use It
The market doesn’t value useless knowledge. Every pharmacist knows Medicinal Chemistry courses are near worthless because a typical pharmacist job never uses the knowledge. Healthcare practitioners already rely on databases to provide information for us like Lexicom or Medscape. Pharmacists don’t need to be walking databases; they need to be clinical decision-makers.
Instead of focusing on discussions about academic integrity, plagiarism, and students cheating using chatbots to pass tests, we should focus on AI’s potential to revolutionize our profession.
AI Innovation is Inevitable.
There’s this old story about Roman Emperor Tiberius, who was presented aluminum by a goldsmith. The Emporer executed the goldsmith out of fear of gold devaluing since aluminum was could be found easier than gold and had more potential uses than gold. Despite the Emperor’s hubris, nearly 2,000 years later, aluminum was rediscovered and innovated. No matter how much people, with or without power, deny new technology, innovation always wins out over time.
AI has the potential to replace unnecessary work.
Just 200 years ago, 90% of Americans were farmers, and today that number is less than 1%. Did those farmers just disappear? No, they moved on to more creative, scientific, and advanced work.
AI can eliminate jobs and tasks in pharmacies, but it also can create new professions, jobs, and opportunities for pharmacists. Innovation naysayers claim that AI will replace people, and some think it won’t. Let me ask a question:
Not anymore. Innovation transformed the pharmacy profession to specialize. Innovation, AI in this context, won’t replace a human. It replaces unnecessary work and, in turn, creates new jobs and opportunities.
Original article is taken from The Happy PharmD Newsletter here.