SOON, THE ROLE OF THE PHARMACIST IS GOING TO BE GREATLY ENHANCED BY THE WIDER SHARING OF INFORMATION
A New Digital Era for Pharmacy? So, what might this mean for us in pharmacy? It will take some time for things to crystallise fully, but we’ve already started to see a glimpse of what the future will hold. COVID has helped to catalyse the rollout of system solutions which enables pharmacists to access centralised patient data, removing the exclusive reliance on information held locally within the patient medication record software of choice. Soon, the role of the pharmacist is going to be greatly enhanced by the wider sharing of information, improving the ability to make the right clinical decisions for their patients based on a full data picture.
The introduction of these systems will bring about a step change in how we care for our patients. In Northern Ireland, the Encompass programme will streamline patient journeys supporting healthcare providers with real-time information. In Scotland, the National Digital Platform will support healthcare workers to record, access and share information to improve care.
Encompass acts as a hub for a range of spokes including the likes of the Northern Ireland laboratory and pathology information systems, and ePharmacy systems. The power of encompass to create and hold digital care records for every person in the country will bring in a new digital era for patients and clinicians. Digital infrastructure is the springboard of innovation. Imagine a future where patients’ own at-home diagnostic devices can feed data directly into their digital record. With instant and remote access, clinicians can differentially diagnose based on a full picture of their health - it’s easy to see just how much of a utopian future awaits!
A Straight Road Ahead? Whilst the rationale for holistic and significantly scaled digital health system is clear, the integration of this into normal and professional lives is not going to be easy.
The success of any approach like this is dependent on the end user – our patients. Their perceptions, acceptance of the technologies being used, and comfort and desire to use those same
technologies themselves is paramount to any of this working. The buy-in by end users to the utilisation of technology has been a focus of study, leading to the emergence of technology acceptance models3
. These studies tell us that, as
professionals, we carry influence with our patients and we will have a key role in bringing our patients and community into the digital healthcare age. Our own upskilling will be required too, for example: we may need new skills to explain why the data a patient has recorded from a wearable device might not actually be telling them they have an arrhythmia, or perhaps worse, why it does.
There is a clear appetite for the wholesale digitisation of healthcare from our patients, with 77% of those asked stating that they were already accessing online services, and indeed indicating that they wanted to see more of those services, and improvements in the ones which were already available.1
This is a useful and promising
start, but we need to ensure that we are in a position to act as “digital healthcare evangelists” in a significant way if we are to move everyone >
THERE IS A CLEAR APPETITE FOR THE WHOLESALE DIGITISATION OF HEALTHCARE FROM OUR PATIENTS, WITH 77% OF THOSE ASKED STATING THAT THEY WERE ALREADY ACCESSING ONLINE SERVICES
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