Students train in the pharmacy of the future
The University of South Florida Health College of Pharmacy in November opened a 1,500-sq.-ft. concept pharmacy called the USF Health Pharmacy Plus that sees 5,000 patients per week and features advanced robotics, medication therapy management and pharmacogenomics to better prepare its 320 pharmacy students for a future in retail pharmacy.
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The entire space offers technology at its core, while providing a personalized experience with on-site pharmacists. Among the $300,000 of high-tech solutions included in the concept is a pharmacy automation solution to dispense the majority of medications, which frees the pharmacist to engage in therapeutic patient care. The pharmacy anticipates more collaborative consultation with other healthcare providers through a system of integrated electronic medical records. And patients will be able to access health information themselves through a range of apps or by scanning a QR code that will direct them to educational health content. “We want to bring advanced automation into the pharmacy,” USF Pharmacy’s Kevin Sneed, PharmD, said. USF Health Pharmacy Plus is partnering with RxMedic on its automation. “I wanted the pharmacists to have as little contact with pill bottles as possible. ... We can verify what’s in the bottle to make sure it’s the right drug for the right patient at the right time and the right instructions, but I didn’t want them to physically have to handle those medications.”
The pharmacy of the future incorporates a private consultation office, where pharmacists can counsel patients on medication therapy or disease state management. But USF Health Pharmacy Plus takes it one step further. There is also a telemedicine component, Sneed added, enabled through a partnership with Onyx. “I envision that patients will be able to videoconference in, and we can set up appointments,” he said. “We can improve communications with our patients. ... We’ll get to the point where we can put graphs and charts and other materials up for them to see on their screen.”
And wireless diagnostics — scales, blood-pressure monitors, glucometers, etc. — will be on hand to get a baseline measurement of a patient’s health. “I see a role where community pharmacies will be able to not only sell these devices, but then work with patients to have them send the information to the pharmacist,” Sneed said. Sneed is working with a pair of technology companies to develop software packages that can warehouse data and communicate with all the different wearable devices. That data would not only be warehoused for patient access, but would become a part of that patient’s electronic medical record, too.
USF Health Pharmacy Plus also will employ pharmacogenomics, which analyzes the DNA of patients. Pharmacogenomics will enable pharmacists to predict how patients may react to one prescription regimen or another. Through pharmacogenomics, not only will USF Health Pharmacy Plus be able to optimize health outcomes, but if an expensive biomedicine will not metabolize in a particular patient, pharmacogenomics can save considerable treatment expense. “That should be something that’s pharmacy driven and then shared with the healthcare community,” Sneed said.
Sneed sees the role of the pharmacist continuing to evolve into more of a healthcare practitioner/patient advocate role, and the USF Health Pharmacy Plus is designed to prepare students for that future. “The academic setting is the perfect place to do [this concept pharmacy] because ... the most important thing we’re going to accomplish is showing our students a different way of how to employ pharmacy when they leave our program,” he said. “I want them to walk into all of the major retailers and be equipped to deal with the ambiguity of the change of healthcare and feel confident that they have some really data-driven, technology-driven background experiences to help these companies evolve even quicker.”
Pharmacy Plus has been under construction since February 2014 and cost USF Health around $400,000 to construct, according to reports.