Esther Yang
9:05AM-10:00AM class
Prof. Jason Arenstein
Cover Page
This essay was difficult to put all the sources together as one even though this was my revised essay. Using the chart helped me organize my thoughts and information about these sources once again, which it helped me refer back to all my sources. I enjoyed writing about a topic that I would be working on in the future. After these researches that I did, I have learned a lot about the pharmacy. Through the research, I was able to discover new things about the process about the pharmacy. I am glad that even though technologies are developing, job as pharmacist is needed rather than slowly decreasing. Overall, I am glad about this paper and I enjoyed it.
Esther Yang
Instructor: Arenstein
Semester Topic: Technologies are impacting the pharmaceutical field drastically.
Inquiry Question: Does the advancement of technology improve the job of pharmacist or slowly remove them from the equation?
Title: Innovation of Technology
I. Brief introduction how this research started.
II. Introduction
A. Introduction about how engineers started inventing new technologies to pharmacy.
B. Explanation of the object-text
C. Revised inquiry question
III. Body ( 1-2 paragraphs)
A. Further information about the object-text and how
B. Give reasons why the object text helps to answer the inquiry Question
C. Provide information why pharmacy is innovating
D. Using the object-text, explain why new technologies are needed.
E. How using the new technologies would help in pharmacy industry
F. Introduce some technologies by introducing the idea that the lens texts can help
IV. Body ( 3-6 paragraphs)
A. Introduce my first source and how it may help answer the inquiry question
B. How my source can help me answer my inquiry question
C. How few of the new technologies can have a great impact in pharmacy industry
D. Explain other two sources and relate with my object text
V. Conclusion
A. Summary of the entire essay.
B. The final answer for my inquiry question
Better Pharmacy
Technologies have been evolved over the years. Technologies have helped pharmacy improve delivering drugs to the patients. We see that pharmacy is constantly changing how pharmacists deliver medications to us. The methods have been changing by inventing new technologies that deliver medications in best way. These new inventions have helped improve but it was leading into different issues, for example, if they find advantages, they would find disadvantages. The question that arises would be if it is possible to resolve this issue, while retaining the advantage of technology.
Innovation of pharmacy started in 1970s with introducing with pill counting machines. This change took place because for accuracy, safety, industry standards, and competency in the pharmacy environment. In the past there were many errors that were made and wrong medications would be delivered to the patients. Thousands of deaths occurred each year in the United States due to medication errors. Medication errors can be wrong drug, wrong dosage of the drug, wrong instructions, expired drug, and wrong amount of pills. Because of this, pharmacy marketing has been increasing demand for better technology that can improve. As technology has been improving, pharmacist’s education has changed throughout the year. In the past, pharmacists just needed to be educated about the drugs and measurements. Now, a pharmacist needs to be educated on how the technologies are being used. Not only pharmacists need to know about the medications, they have to know the usage of the technology to deliver drugs in best way.
As on object-text, I overviewed and interviewed a local pharmacist. It helped me gather information about the technology that was being used today in local pharmacy. It was a simple technology that looked like a computer. This technology has improved by reducing the errors but there were few disadvantages about this computer. There are few people who try to get drugs illegally. These people can simply hack and send prescriptions to pharmacies from computer in their homes. Also, another concern is that patient records can be fixed into false records or can be erased. After viewing my object-text, the question was “Is the pharmacy in the process of improving thanks to new technologies?”
Many systems, robots, technologies are developing to help make pharmacy operations more efficient and effective. Right now, the most important factor about using these technologies in pharmacy is that if it is installed correctly. If it’s not, it can produce inefficiencies and errors, which it is another problem. Therefore, as the technologies are improving, information are given in details.
The vice president of healthcare solutions, Inc. has introduced a new technology called e-prescription. The E-prescription can resolve many issues in pharmacy. It would be able to scan bar codes, robotics, and it would be provided with automated product machine (ATM). Similar to this, Robot-Rx is another technology that uses barcodes. This is designed to save time and money in pharmacy. E-prescribing also solves financial problems. E-prescription saves $0.97 per prescription in pharmacy labor cost and all refills saves $0.37 per prescription in pharmacy labor costs. The ATM machine for RX is a machine for patients to pick up their medication in any markets that patients are comfortable to pick up at. This method connects with another technology called Pillpick. It is a system that provides for the fully automated packaging. It has a great storage and distribution of medications in a unit dose hospital environment. If e-prescription emerges with pharmacy, it integrates new technology into pharmacy dispensing technology. This technology is called Med-Dispense. It provides decentralized automated medication dispensing system for health is facilities nationwide. This allows nursing access to medications with pharmacy control. It reduces medication errors, eliminate missing doses, eliminate manual charge functions with interface functionality, and ensure accurate dispensing with profile interface.
ScriptPro is another technology that offers a “family” of robotic prescription dispensing solutions to automate prescription fulfillment from point of entry to point of sale and beyond. It helps pharmacist to handle increasing prescription volumes while solving staffing problems. ScriptPro has ability to track and accurately process partial fills, prints description of drug on the label, to calibrate cells on-site in minutes, and reports for inventory management, for example, lot number tracking and drug utilization. Similar to this, a system called TCGRx offers pharmacy optimization across space, labor, and inventory. This technology shows the unit dose and does oral solid packaging. Multi dose oral solids packaging sizes allow for a variety of business and patient satisfaction needs. It is expandable from 256, 324, or 384 oral solids and does redundant lower packaging units to ensure maximum uptime. It optimizes space, labor and inventory but adds more capacity. It is a system for easy reconfiguration and increases accuracy. Like the ScriptPro, it helps the work flow and consult/formulate pharmacy footprint, and optimize space efficiency.
Walgreen is the nation’s largest drugstore chain. This drugstore operates 6,204 drugstores in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Walgreen has great records of pharmacy technology innovation. In 1980s, Walgreens invented the electronic prescription, which this technology is still being used. Walgreen would be first retailed store to able to use these new inventions. Also, they are partnering with Google to give access to pharmacy patients to their personal prescription history through Google Health. This would provide information on a new product that was launched today that helps users store, organize and manage their medical records online. This system is very useful. “Doctors often don’t have access to a patient’s complete prescription history, which can lead to harmful drug interactions,” said Don Huonker, Walgreens senior vice president of health care innovation. “While many patients use Walgreens online pharmacy to access their prescription history, they don’t always provide that information to their doctor. By partnering with Google Health, we can securely link a patient’s Walgreens.com pharmacy information with their Google Health account on their request. This will make it even easier for patients to communicate their information to multiple doctors and their caretakers, who can be granted access to their Google Health account with the patient’s permission when the feature is enabled in the near future.”
Technologies have been developing over the years. After reading about these new innovated technologies, another question was “Does the advancement of technology improves the job of pharmacist or slowly removes them from the equation?”
Although technologies are innovating and seems slowly taking pharmacist’s job, it is not true. Because of all these technologies, pharmacy needs many pharmacy technicians or pharmacists that are able to use the technologies. On a University of Alaska Anchorage blog, it tells the job duties and opportunity due to new technologies. They all need to be trained first and able to use these robots. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics the profession will be growing at a rate of 21-35 percent until the year 2012. Also on the article The Pharmacist’s Role in Treatment Adherence, pharmacists should be responsible to seek patient consent for access to medical records and participate in collaborative practice agreements that allow communication between physicians, nurses, and other health care practitioners through electronic medical records. A pharmacist needs to make sure that robots are being used correctly and deliver drugs to the patients in a safely mannered way.
Throughout my research, I have gathered much information and was able to conclude my inquiry questions. Many pharmacists believe that “future is now.” Growth of accidentals was increasing in the past but as technologies have developed, only outcomes for patient would happen. One pharmacist named Dr. Karalis said “We have automation to do multi-dose packaging, bar-code scanning, script imaging, and six to seven different types of compliance packaging, I started with technology five years ago, but it has never replaced an employee or cut down costs. I invest in technology for the ability to grow and for accuracy.” Pharmacy is in the process of improving thanks the technology and the advancement of technology improves the job of pharmacist.
Work Cited
BCC Research “ U.S. Market for Pharmacy Automation” 1 Feb. 2004
http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/962514.html
Berger, Bruce A., Felkey, Bill, Kruegar, Kem P. “ The Pharmacist’s Role in Treatment
Adherence”. 15 Dec. 2008
http://www.uspharmacist.com/index.asp?show=article&page=8_1647.htm
Deerfield, Ill. “Walgreens Partners with Google to Provide Pharmacy Patients Access to Their
Prescription History Through Google Health”. 19 May 2008
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_May_19/ai_n25434974
Dietz, Don, RPh. “Emerging Pharmacy Technology: Rx for success”. 27 January 2006.
Discover the First and Only Next-Generation Pharmacy Automation
http://www.rxshowcase.com/pharmacy_automation_companies.htm
Hernandez, Lynda. “ Universicy of Alaska Anchorage” pharmacy technology. 2008
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/ctc/alliedhealth/pharmacy/index.cfm
Kim, Jina. Personal interview. 10 Sept. 2008
Mckim, A.S. & Sturb, Robert. “Dimethyl Sulfoxide USP, PhEur in Approved Pharmaceutical
Paul, Reid. “ Technology drives safety and innovation for retail pharmacy”. 14 Jul. 2008
Products and Medical Devices.” Pharmaceutical Technology May 2008 Volume 32. 5 Dec 2007. 74-84
