Medication decisions carry consequences across the healthcare ecosystem.
Research shows that medication-related harm affects one in 30 patients and is related to half of all avoidable harm in healthcare. Polypharmacy affects approximately half of older adults worldwide and is associated with a higher risk of multiple adverse health outcomes, with risk increasing as medication burden rises.
Medication decisions also represent the most interconnected workflows in healthcare:
- Providers prescribe medications and treatments.
- Payers manage coverage and approvals through formulary and prior authorizations.
- Digital tools increasingly help guide decision-making or support plan adherence.
- Patients manage their own adherence to care.
- Pharmacies validate the prescriptions, dispense, and answer patient questions.
The retail pharmacy sits at an important intersection point between the practical workflows of medication dispensing and the nuanced art of patient care and counseling. AI has potential to support retail pharmacy by automating some workflows, enabling pharmacists to focus more on patient interactions.
However, when AI is introduced into the healthcare decision-making process, it causes concern for many pharmacists and patients alike that health outcomes could be negatively impacted by ungoverned, unvalidated, or clinically unreliable outputs that might be generated.
Guardrails and processes to promote patient safety in the AI era must extend into the pharmacy workflow, where medication information and decisions from across healthcare converge with real-world medication use and patient outcomes.