| | MAY 20208UTLOOKHealthcare Tech Today, the average patient visits their pharmacy 35 times per year. When compared to the average four times per year for physician orprovider visits, this statistic is quite notable. With frequent touchpoints, coupled with field expertise, pharmacists are well-positioned to play a critical role on a patient's overall care team. And, technology has only aided inexpanding this role. The modern pharmacist provides personalized care to ensure positive patient outcomes through counseling patients on health care needs, providing immunizations, helping navigate benefits programs and reaching them in real-time, wherever they are located. They conduct patient outreach, track and trace medications, and maintain a balanced inventory. Pharmacists are challenged with promoting adherence, helping reduce recurring, preventable hospitalizations and are a true partner in patient health. As their role expands, it's more important than ever to continue to integrate available technology to optimize a pharmacy's business practices in order to maintain a profitable yet patient-centered practice. Imagine going into a pharmacy before the advent of smart technology, artificial intelligence and tools like electronic benefit verification and eCare records. Manual tracking, cumbersome verifications and lack of streamlined communication between providers and payers all resulted in a complicated, time-consuming ­ and potentially expensive ­process simply for a patient to receive their prescription. But, today, this picture is changing. By applying modern consumer technology to health care, pharmacists can now virtually order medicines, automate inventory and even use vending technology to distribute medicines, and at exponentially faster and safer rates than could have ever been imagined years ago. In many ways, the digital interfaces that pharmacists operate in are no different than the e-commerce interfaces commonly used by consumers today. These simply-navigated technologies not only reduce transaction time for customers, prescribers and payers, but also provide pharmacists the opportunity to serve more of the patient population with face-to-face engagement. In an effort to further support pharmacists, AmerisourceBergen has created ABC Order, an innovative, digital platform that easily integrates into their overall pharmacy workflow and allows customers to both more effectively manage their businesses and also create more time for patient care. Through collaborative, design thinking, AmerisourceBergen engaged pharmacists and developed Implementing Consumer Technology to Maintain a Patient-Focused PharmacyBy Dale Danilewitz, Executive Vice President and CIO, AmerisourceBergenIN MY OPINION
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