AI
Sonya Collins
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer “on the horizon” in health care. It’s becoming an active partner in patient care, including in health-system pharmacies. AI-driven tools are reshaping workflows, improving medication safety, and enhancing clinical decision making. From easing administrative burden on pharmacists to lowering hospital readmission rates, AI is empowering pharmacists to focus more on direct patient care and complex clinical responsibilities. As the demand for efficiency and precision grows, understanding how to integrate AI responsibly and effectively is becoming essential for every hospital pharmacy professional.
“Bringing in AI is the perfect marrying of technology and problem-solving,” said Gina Luchen, PharmD, director of digital health and data at the ASHP Innovation Center. “A pharmacist plus AI could be far more effective than either of the two alone,” she said, “but it’s not to be trusted blindly. It’s an additional tool.”
AI lightens administrative load
The majority of AI use in health-system pharmacies, Luchen said, is in administrative tasks. Pharmacies are leveraging AI to triage paperwork, speed up prior authorizations, and in some cases, automate documentation during patient encounters. Also in the pilot stages is AI-assisted auto-verification of medication orders.
“Our primary goal is to save clinicians’ time, so they can spend more of it with patients and avoid staying late in the office,” said David Aguero, PharmD, from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where clinicians are planning to pilot AI note generation.
AI assists with inventory management
Some health systems, such as MarinHealth Medical Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, are using AI to manage automated dispensing cabinets—replacing a once-manual task with an automated one for assessing and maintaining stock levels.
“Setting different alert models can help determine whether a particular medication is used more efficiently in one area that needs to be stocked more than other areas, for example, which helps redistribute the resources of the health system,” Luchen said.
These approaches can help health systems strike the right balance between maintaining critical stock to meet patient needs and avoiding high costs and waste associated with too much stock.
AI-assisted inventory management can also help pharmacies identify potential diversion of controlled substances.
“It can identify areas of higher traffic for controlled substances, patterns of use within the organization, even drill down to behavior of different departments,” Luchen said.
AI bolsters patient safety
AI has the potential to improve clinical decision support. It can expand on existing algorithms that generate safety alerts, Luchen said, “further utilizing the patient profile and flagging issues beyond just an allergy that might be flagged. It can say, ‘There’s contraindication here.’ ”
Pharmacists at West Virginia University are developing an AI-driven tool aimed at streamlining the medication reconciliation process prior to patient discharge. Traditionally the process takes 30 minutes to an hour of a pharmacist’s time and is highly prone to human error. The new AI tool is expected to free up clinician time, reduce medication errors, and significantly cut hospital readmissions.
At St. Jude, the pharmacy has used an AI-driven tool to aggregate medication literature for the hospital’s Medication Safety and Policy Team and its clinical pharmacy specialists, helping clinicians and policymakers stay on top of the latest safety data without costing them substantial extra time.
Pharmacists are still in charge
AI is a tool for pharmacists to wield. It can identify patterns and issue alerts, for example, but it’s up to pharmacists to verify the validity of these warnings and determine whether they should be heeded.
With this understanding, pharmacists can be assured that AI will not eliminate the need for their positions, Aguero said.
“There will always be meaningful work for thoughtful pharmacy practitioners,” he explained. “AI should be seen as a tool to improve efficiency, offload routine or draining tasks, and scale services that might otherwise be limited by available resources. With the dearth of students entering school right now, we should ask ourselves, how can AI help us meet the coming staffing challenges while continuing to scale in the profession?” ■