Future of pharmacy: Tech and automation experts size up where the industry is headed

Adheris Health 
Jim Rotsart, executive vice president, client services

Drug Store News: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic? 
Jim Rotsart: Adheris Health evolved to address this new reality by transforming and individualizing patient health-and-wellness engagement for our partners. We collaborated with our partners to provide patients with important information about public services and health information, strengthening the connection between pharmacy and the patient, and enabling pharmacists to have more time to focus on providing quality, individualized patient care. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
JR: Our offerings are multimodal, enabling us to deliver critical patient support communications, such as medication education, financial savings and reminders, regardless of how patients prefer to receive their prescription or which intersection of care they are currently navigating. We can ensure that important resources are making it into the hands of patients, even in chaotic times, to ensure patients have the stability and support they need to stay with their treatment plan, which is a challenge even in the best of times.  

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy? 
JR: In the near future, we expect a significant deepening of technology that connects all market participants. There is a huge untapped potential in the pharmacy sector to close the gap and connect all necessary stakeholders, including prescribers, pharma, health plans, labs, suppliers, delivery services and the list goes on. 

Adheris Health’s comprehensive patient management solution helps to close this gap. Our complementary and flexible platform for stakeholders in the intersection of pharmacy, pharmaceutical, medical, payer and other related sectors connects directly to the patient and simplifies the flow.

Bavis Drive-Thru
Charles Brown, president and CEO

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Charles Bowen: At Bavis Drive-Thru, we are in a continual process of helping pharmacies — established and new — update and expand their drive-thru capabilities. Indeed, the surge in demand shows quite clearly that customers are depending heavily on their local pharmacies to supply necessary medications, comfort and consulting, which is vitally important to patient well-being.

We are helping to strengthen the bond between pharmacy retailers and their customers by providing all the tools necessary to ensure that drive-thru interactions are efficient, the experience is positive and vital communications are clearly understood. This bond is happening currently and will continue post-pandemic as customers’ health concerns will retain a position at the forefront. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
CB: Using Bavis equipment ensures that all the drive-thru delivery methods are pharmacy-specific, including well-made, powered, dual-sealed and optionally heated high-capacity transaction drawers, and roomy remote-lane carriers, such as the Captive Carrier TransTrax, where multiple prescriptions can be sent directly to the patient in all drive-thru lanes. This makes the visit easy and pleasant.

Pneumatic tube systems cannot do this, many times causing the patient to have to abandon the drive-thru lanes and walk into the store. This causes severe frustration and a negative experience.

Bavis Drive-Thru has equipment that is designed specifically for pharmacies with both pharmacists and patients in mind. This ensures that patients can get everything they need, right away, without having to leave their car, and that audio/video communications are clear and free of interruptions. 

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy?
CB: In addition to providing access to much needed medications, part of the future of pharmacy will undoubtedly be education and awareness. This passing of information will be built upon the trust that has been earned from interactions between the patient and pharmacist. As things progress, we see pharmacists taking a growing role in these areas.

[Related Content: State of the Pharmacy 2021: Executives weigh in]

Bell and Howell 
Grace Vanier, director of product management, QuickCollect Solutions, powered by Bell and Howell

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Grace Vanier: COVID-19 has dramatically changed consumer behavior, and Bell and Howell’s QuickCollect Solutions enable pharmacies to provide their patients with the convenience and self-service they desire without sacrificing safety and security. The QuickCollect Rx automated prescription kiosk can serve multiple patients at the same time, providing contactless prescription pickup without the wait, when and where it is most convenient for the patient. In addition, the QuickCollect Rx serves to free up the pharmacy staff, enabling them to focus on COVID-19 testing and vaccinations.

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
GV: By automating the prescription storage and pickup process, the QuickCollect Rx can drive a multitude of benefits for both the pharmacy and the patients. The kiosk can free up pharmacy staff by handling the pickup of routine or maintenance medications, allowing pharmacists to spend more time on more clinical activities, such as first-time fill counseling, medication management and vaccinations. The QuickCollect Rx also expands the pharmacy’s pickup options by adding lanes and extending the pharmacy hours without adding to the workload. 

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy?
GV: Pharmacies are a critical component of the healthcare continuum, and pharmacists will continue to rise to the challenge of addressing gaps in care for their patients. As pharmacists are further authorized to operate at the top of their license, they will play a key role in the management of chronic conditions, treatment of minor ailments and delivery of preventative care, improving patient outcomes and driving down healthcare costs. 

Crocus Medical
John Webster, vice president of innovation and product development

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
John Webster: Clearly, the biggest challenge for pharmacists during the pandemic was trying to balance the difficulties of running a business while also trying to fulfill their role as a critical healthcare provider. People were desperate for information and trying to maintain their health, so turning to their trusted pharmacists for advice was their first inclination. Their clinical knowledge and patient relationships certainly raised their profile in the patients’ minds, and their newly expanding role providing vaccines is only enhancing the perceived value of pharmacy, but it has taken a toll mentally and financially in some cases. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
JW: Our pharmacy automation offerings can help alleviate some of the pressures related to the “logistics” of filling and dispensing prescriptions. From our simple countertop pill counters to our automated multidose strip packagers for adherence packaging, or going one step further, Rx self retrieval cabinets, which eliminate the need for patients to “line up” to pick up prescriptions, all help to automate some of the functions that don’t require human oversight. All of our products help provide more time for patient care, patient counseling and a better customer experience, which of course builds customer loyalty.

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy?
JW: Although the funding models are only now starting to evolve, being paid for clinical services and counseling is the direction we feel pharmacy has to move towards. Being paid for the “logistics” of handling/dispensing pills is only going to continue to decrease in value, whereas healthcare knowledge will increasingly become more valuable.  

EnlivenHealth, a division of Omnicell
Danny Sanchez, vice president and general manager

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Danny Sanchez: Our mission at EnlivenHealth is to build and orchestrate advanced digital technology solutions that enable retail pharmacies to keep their patients and staff healthy and safe — before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Equally important, our solutions help pharmacies streamline inefficient workflows and drive measurably better economic results. 

For example, just as the pandemic hit its peak last year, we launched CareScheduler. This solution enables pharmacies to automate the scheduling, patient communications and registry reporting for the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine. Helping our retail partners achieve their own critical mission during the pandemic has inspired EnlivenHealth to contin-uously innovate new patient engagement and communications technology solutions like CareScheduler.

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
DS: Our technology solutions are built to optimize and streamline traditionally manual and inefficient pharmacy processes and workflows. This frees up pharmacists’ time so they can practice at the top of their license and focus on providing higher value clinical services that benefit patients and the pharmacy’s bottom line. In fact, our solutions enable pharmacies to increase script volume by an average of 2.3% over their current growth performance.

Additionally, our solutions are built on a game-changing appointment-based model that transforms the pharmacy practice into one that is more proactive and efficient.

A great example of this transformative pharmacy workflow model is EnlivenHealth’s industry-leading medication synchronization solution. Med Sync is a proven, appointment-based solution that not only makes the pharmacy workflow dramatically more efficient, it also improves medication adherence by as much as three times, according to research recently published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. In addition, our Med Sync platform increases pharmacy retention by 14% while also driving script growth. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
DS: COVID-19 has highlighted the unique attributes of retail pharmacy, underscoring its vital role in health care. Most notably, this includes the unparalleled accessibility of retail pharmacy and the high level of trust that pharmacists have with their patients. We envision the retail pharmacy industry to continue expanding its role and influence in the healthcare continuum. Of course, this will require sophisticated digital technologies and, increasingly, predictive analytics. 

iA 
Marvin Richardson, CEO

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Marvin Richardson: Our vision is to unleash the full potential of pharmacy, and this year pharmacists have played a critical role in helping test and now vaccinate our communities. We know that pharmacists are motivated to practice at the top of their profession now and post pandemic.

We are motivated to help pharmacy providers understand how our prescription fulfillment and automation technologies help take the dispensing work off their plates, so that pharmacists can spend more time with patients and fulfill their primary roles as community healthcare providers. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
MV: Pharmacy providers that work with iA are shifting dispensing work from the store locations to a centralized fulfillment location. Within the centralized fulfillment location, our software enabled prescription fulfillment and automation technologies will run the prescription fulfillment process from end to end while delivering immediate business results, simplifying your operational needs and relentlessly focusing on patient safety. Prescriptions that are filled centrally will then be routed back to stores for patient pickup or shipped directly to the patient, allowing pharmacists to focus on value-added services and patient care, which is something their pharmacists want to do.

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
MV: At iA, we’re implementing our prescription fulfillment and automation solutions at an increasingly rapid pace. And customer interest in iA is growing because the pandemic has served as a catalyst for pharmacy providers to examine how they can help free up pharmacists’ time, with one near-term opportunity being to shift tasks related to dispensing out of the store.

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Inmar Intelligence
Chris Smith, director of product strategy for provider solutions 

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Chris Smith: Amid the pandemic, pharmacies were on the front lines of COVID-19 testing and then for vaccination distribution efforts. But while some of the billing that pharmacies are using follows the traditional pharmacy billing pathways, some do not. As vaccine eligibility expands to younger age groups, pharmacists will continue to spend hours trying to get payment for delivering the service that takes minutes. We’re helping customers understand the nuances of the revenue cycle and to know if they’re being accurately reimbursed. There are a ton of moving targets as it relates to claims and payment data, and we’re helping our clients to understand the full picture.

Pharmacists are now conducting diabetes management, smoking cessation and lipid management programs that used to happen in a physician practice, and we’re enhancing our systems to help them navigate the new landscape.

Our customers are hungry for the supply chain data of the movement of drugs — how they’re ordered, analyzed, inventoried, end connection — because they want to better understand the entire journey. They’re also interested in the payment cycles and to know if they received reimbursement according to a contract, and to understand which drugs may have payment activity that was unexpected and what can be done to fix it, both from a care management perspective and a data perspective. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
CS: Regardless of the pandemic, the economic headwinds of pharmacy management haven’t changed, and we’re helping pharmacies ensure that their financial houses are in order, so they can continue to provide critical patient care. An example of this is that in Medicare Part D, since the start of 2019, our overall client average brand effective rate has decreased over 1.2% of AWP and our overall client average generic effective rate has decreased over 3% of AWP — and that’s before one dollar of DIR is charged.  Commercial impacts to reimbursement are even deeper.  

Additionally, Inmar Intelligence is building technological solutions to ensure that it’s easier for a patient to pay the pharmacy. 

DSN: How do you view the future of the pharmacy industry?
CS: The future of the pharmacy leverages the pharmacist as an integral part of every patients’ care team and is considered an adjunct to their primary care physician. This way, revenue streams can be bifurcated, and we can move from so much focus on being paid for “putting pills in a bottle” and being compensated for the care that pharmacists provide as the last line of defense for their patients. 

KNAPP
Brian Sullivan, senior systems sales manager healthcare solutions USA and Canada

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Brian Sullivan: We have been working with our customers to accelerate their entry into more automated solutions, both in store and centralized. 

In store, retail pharmacies have fast-tracked their entry into digital, touchless prescription and OTC fulfillment. These allow the pharmacy’s patients to pick up their orders when they want and where they want. Our Apostore robotic storage systems, along with 24/7 terminals, are central to these solutions.  

For centralized solutions, our pharmacy customers are broadening their approaches to include micro-fulfillment and nano-fulfillment systems that can service several stores in smaller geographic areas more efficiently. 

These approaches are driven by the need for expanded health services in the pharmacy, more options for prescription delivery and cost reductions to offset the various regulatory fees that our customers are challenged with. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
BS: When our customers install an Apostore system into their pharmacy, a number of positive things happen: The automated “chaotic” storage system requires approximately 60% less space for medication storage behind the counter and also allows the pharmacy to store their OTC meds into the same system. This opens space for a whole range of expanded medical offerings and helps fulfill the pharmacy’s role as the first point of contact for patient health. 

To counter the effects of DIR and GER fees, our centralized pharmacies significantly drive down costs for prescription fulfillment. Reduced staffing requirements per prescription also ease the challenge that pharmacies are having with technician shortages. Also, as we continue to address the upcoming DSCSA requirements at the retail pharmacy level, KNAPP is using our learnings from the last eight years of working with pharma manufacturers and wholesalers to help our retail pharmacy customers to meet these requirements more cost effectively.

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy? 
BS: At KNAPP, we are seeing some overlapping trends that cross the vertical markets that we serve. Health care, our retail and grocery customers are all driving to push costs out of the supply chain through automation and expand their offerings of services to meet higher consumer expectations. 

LexisNexis Risk Solutions 
Craig Ford, vice president of sales for pharmacy and enterprise strategic markets

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Craig Ford: LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a highly innovative company, delivering risk management and decision support tools. We are grateful to partner with all of the leading pharmacy chains and most PBMs. These partnerships are vital to the collective success that will emerge on the other side of this pandemic.  

Much collaboration has happened in the last 12 to 13 months between LexisNexis and our business partners. Regardless if they already had systems in place or uncovered the need for a new solution to address testing, patient identity authentication, safety or billing — the lines have been and continue to be open. Our business, from day one, has been built around compliance, identity management and risk mitigation. We feel fortunate to be able to respond, support and truly make a difference when our customers needed it the most.   

At the same time, we also know that retail pharmacies operate on thin margins and that they are constantly managing operational and compliance risks. So, we continue to be committed to having the most current data in real time that will empower pharmacies to have greater efficiencies as we all move forward together.

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
CF: We are passionate about leveraging data and analytics to connect patients, providers and healthcare technology systems in meaningful ways. By applying proprietary linking technology and advanced analytics to rich data, we deliver actionable insights to pharmacy and other healthcare clients, so that they can make informed decisions to ensure compliance, improve financial results and support better health outcomes for the patients they serve. 

DSN: How do you view the future of pharmacy?
CF: LexisNexis Risk Solutions is extremely optimistic about the pharmacy of tomorrow. Critical events like this pandemic quickly highlight risks and challenges within any industry, but these events also bring about new opportunity. Communication is key, and it needs to continue regardless if it’s in person or virtual. We are confident that through our ongoing, collaborative relationships, we are positioned to help meet and exceed the needs of pharmacy.

McKesson
Erin Rebholz, vice president of business development, innovation and data programs 

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Erin Rebholz: Throughout the last year, we’ve seen increased adoption of technology solutions to help with flexible payment options, improved patient communications and delivery methods, as well as a renewed interest in central fill automation and mail services to support more flexible patient delivery. With vaccine distribution becoming such a focus for many pharmacies, we’ve also helped them adopt new technologies to streamline workflow and clinical engagement to better manage data and reimbursement.  

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
ER: At McKesson, we take a holistic view to assess their operations and help provide customer value by better connecting the technology assets and distribution services across our businesses. One of our focus areas is a more integrated ordering, inventory and forecasting platform. From a more data-driven ordering process and an increasingly feature-rich pharmacy management system to a seamless connection to the payment services and even an interconnected central fill solution, we’re able to identify and help maximize efficiencies across the value chain. 

We’re also investing in data and analytics to provide best in class access across our solutions. We see this as foundational to our product development lifecycle and integral to our holistic approach, so that our customers can better connect the dots across our platforms.  

DSN: How do you view the future of the pharmacy industry? 
ER: The future of pharmacy is an interconnected network of care delivery systems, using technology to create a higher throughput, lowering the cost of dispensing and enabling a more patient-focused model. Doing this will allow pharmacists to spend less time on manual tasks and more time on clinical care, or as we like to say, operating at the top of their license.

Parata
Mark Longley, chief strategy officer

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Mark Longley: Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a greater awareness of the need for automation solutions to enable pharmacists and staff to maintain their service levels while dealing with drastically shifting patient volumes and staffing availability. Parata is helping retailers address the patient and labor challenges with our automation solutions both in the pharmacy and in the fast-growing central fill segment. 

Historically, pharmacies would look for automation solutions only after they had achieved very high business volumes, but already, our retailer partners are proactively investing in solutions that enable their stores to maintain high customer service levels and to be best prepared for the next storm.

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
ML: Parata’s purpose is to power pharmacies to help people live healthier lives. Our extensive portfolio of automation solutions can power the smallest retail setting or drive efficiency in the largest of fully integrated closed-door pharmacies. Our technology aids customers by driving labor and cost efficiencies for their business while also maximizing safety and accuracy for the patient. 

Parata’s compliance packaging solutions enable pharmacies to provide an organized process for managing medications for those patients who need it the most, such as those dealing with chronic conditions. Additionally, it can help ensure patients are taking the right medication at the right time, which is essential for true medication adherence, and, combined, work to improve overall patient outcomes. 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
ML: Today, pharmacy is a combination of not only clinical operations, but a manufacturing center as well. The process of receiving, filling and verifying prescription orders is time consuming and somewhat distracting from the true value-added clinical services that make pharmacies unique healthcare hubs in communities. The future of how pharmacy looks and acts will be molded both by economics and by the broader healthcare shift towards personalization of care. This equates into highly automated production environments with most of the focus shifting toward appointment-based clinical engagements with patients, both in the pharmacy and their homes.

SynMed
Samantha Cockburn, vice president of marketing and corporate development

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Samantha Cockburn: While the fight against COVID-19 has been a work in progress for well over a year, there is a strong sense that we’re finally turning a long-awaited corner. The spread in optimism has been undeniable. Vaccine numbers are encouraging and chances of reaching herd immunity are increasing, but perhaps even more important is the fact that many have begun to adopt habits that have become the cornerstones of a more hopeful “future normal.” 

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients?
SC: We’re helping pharmacy leaders through the push with automated products and systems that make hands-free, multidose blister card medication packaging possible. In essence, we give safety a boost using robotic functions that perform prescription refill operations in place of a human technician. As a result, our retail partners get a system that is 99.98% accurate and their customers get the peace of mind that comes from knowing any risk of inadvertent transmission has been kept to a minimum. 

Multidose blister cards have been proven to increase medication adherence rates. With clearly printed labels that give patients a stronger grip on what they need to take and when, an empty hole punch offers tangible, immutable proof that a drug has been taken. 

DSN: How do you view the future of the pharmacy industry? 
SC: Over time, as the country fully emerges from the dark clouds of COVID-19, local independent pharmacies will have the opportunity to offer a significant number of silver linings in the form of “touchless” packaging for medications, but also for nonprescription dietary supplements, daily vitamins and other untouched “immunity” boosters.

SynMed automation for multidose blister packaging doesn’t tire, make mistakes in concentration or run up labor costs.

Temptime, a Zebra Technologies Company
Katie Kraverath, senior business development manager

DSN: How are you helping customers/pharmacy retailers as they seek to move forward amid the pandemic and post pandemic?
Katie Kraverath: Amid the pandemic, many people opted to receive their medications via delivery rather than visiting a pharmacy in person. As a result, specialty and mail-order pharmacies have all seen a significant increase in business. 

Many of the medications being shipped directly to patients’ homes are temperature sensitive and are required to be kept within specific temperature ranges during storage and transit in order to preserve their efficacy.  

Our TransTracker visual temperature indicators are used to monitor medication shipments and provide a clear visual alert, if a specific temperature threshold was exceeded for a period of time. They take the guesswork out of temperature concern and give the patients peace of mind that their medication was not compromised by unsafe temperature exposure during transit. They also help to eliminate costly unnecessary reships due to suspected temperature concern. 

Temptime also offers a line of electronics, including our EDGE W200 facility monitoring system, which monitors both temperature and humidity, and provides near-real time alerts should any areas exceed the customers’ desired limits.  

DSN: Why are your offerings beneficial to your customers and their patients? 
KK: Temptime helps pharmacies by providing them with simple, easy to use temperature monitoring solutions to ensure regulatory compliance and streamline cold chain operations. Our products provide critical insights to medication temperature exposure that remove subjectivity in temperature concern for both the patient and the pharmacy.  

DSN: How do you view the future of the pharmacy industry?
KK: We will continue to see an uptick in medication delivery as well as significant growth in home-based health care overall. The industry will see continued strengthening of regulations, particularly with regards to temperature monitoring of controlled room temperature medications in addition to refrigerated medications, which have had the regulatory focus thus far.