The Expanding Role of Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacy

Volume 25, Issue 5

Pharmacy, as a profession, has been aided by technological innovation throughout its history. For example, the widespread use of compounding in local apothecaries has been supplanted by the rise of industrial pharmaceutical manufacturing. With most drugs arriving at the pharmacy in their finished form, pharmacists were able to pivot to activities more focused on patient care.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the last few years can provide new opportunities for pharmacists to move away from manual tasks. The use of AI-powered robotics can take over many of the manual tasks involved in filling prescriptions, which could further free up pharmacists to focus on patients. 

In the last 6 months or so, several AI-powered platforms have been launched by various tech companies. ChatGPT, one of the more recognized platforms, is powered by OpenAI. This means that anyone can now access AI for content-based questions. 

This is a stark change from prior use of AI in pharmacy, whereby pharmacists were liberated from tedious tasks involving drug dispensing. These new AI platforms could actually threaten the intellectual heart of what pharmacy is as a profession. While pharmacists are often conveniently located in a patient’s community, AI platforms are available on every smartphone or laptop. Could there be a future where patients forgo seeking medical advice from a pharmacist in favor of using AI?

Perhaps—although the technology is far from ready for this task. Early renditions of AI are still fraught with errors. I asked ChatGPT to tell me about the College of Pharmacy at Long Island University, and its response contained numerous simple factual errors (the year we awarded our first PharmD degree, for instance). 

A group of cardiologists asked ChatGPT a series of 25 questions and graded the responses as appropriate or not appropriate. Of these, 21 questions were graded as appropriate, while 4 were not. These are not great odds for a prospective patient, in my opinion. 

Nevertheless, the technology will advance, and in the future, patients will likely be able to get simple pharmaceutical questions answered online. As pharmacists, we will have to think about our next pivot when that happens. My guess is that we will need to shift our focus toward transforming pharmacies into comprehensive wellness centers, where patients can converse about all facets of their drug therapies with a kind, empathetic provider.