Pharmacists play a crucial role in medication therapy management, serving as trusted experts who can help patients understand their medications and ensure continuity of care as they transition between healthcare settings. Medication adherence is a key focus, with pharmacists leveraging technology like comprehensive medication management systems to coordinate care for complex patients receiving prescriptions from multiple sources. Advancements in pharmacy automation, such as IV workflow solutions and robotic compounding, are enabling standardized, error-reduced processes that enhance safety and efficiency. Arpit Mehta, PharmD, MPH, MHA, CPEL, director of pharmacy at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania discusses automation, IV compounding, and more.
**Pharmacy Times:** What is the role of the pharmacist in medication management, and how can pharmacists be integrated in health care teams to fulfill this role?
**Arpit Mehta:** Pharmacists play a huge role in medication therapy management. Certainly, they're the experts in medication therapy. So being part of that team, the overall team, that the patient at the center of the care and everybody providing input, and pharmacists, again, holding the medication therapy portion as their expertise as part of the care team is very important for our patient. I think we can help patient understand their the therapy, again, the medications that we're treating the disease for in the language the patient understands. I think we're trusted professionals in the community as well. So as the patients leave the hospitals or health systems, they go out in the community, there can be that continued care with the pharmacist in the community that they trust and rely on to get their medications. So we certainly play a huge role in that integrated model and pharmacists should be integrated at all levels of health care.
**Pharmacy Times:** What strategies can be employed to improve medication adherence in patients with complex conditions, such as cancer or rare diseases?
**Arpit Mehta:** Medication adherence is huge. It's huge with the CMS Stargap closures. It's huge with valid-based reimbursements. So there's certainly value in providing that high quality care for our patients, especially for the complex care where patients are extremely confused on what they're supposed to do, they may be getting medications from multiple pharmacies, whether it be specialty, whether it be their community or retail setting. So pharmacists being present, making those phone calls, having some sort of comprehensive medication management with those patients is key in be in providing that successful care for the patient.
**Pharmacy Times:** How can technology be used to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety in a compounding pharmacy setting?
**Arpit Mehta:** There's actually lot of automation now in IV compounding space. So let's start with IV workflow solution. IV workflow solution helps us standardize how we compound medications in all of our clean rooms, and really how each technician within the same pharmacy compounds and IV. Before IV technology, if you have 4 technicians working on the same day in the clean room, all 4 of them are going to compound the same drug 4 different ways IV compound. The technology allows us to standardize that, allows us to truly effectively use the NDCs that are appropriate for the patient, with the barcode scan with the picture capability and gravimetrically weighing the product before it reaches the patient. Beyond there, there is IV robotics. IV robotics can truly help us. It's a fully automated compounding, so we take away the human component completely out of that picture. The robotics does all of those things. It's an auto compounding of the medication allows us to use extended beyond use dating, because, again, touch contamination is eliminated from that process. It allows us to reduce or rely less on our partners, in the sense that we can presupport ourselves. We have better inventory control. We can truly manage the cost, and it really just helps us do a better job in providing patient care. So technology in IV compounding space is huge. At the end of the day, if you think about how much money and time we're spending with USP, right, ensuring that there's sterility of the products, ensuring we don't have infections in our clean rooms, things of that sort. Think about the errors. We're not tracking that. Unless you have the technology in place, we don't track that piece, and that is what's important. That's where automation plays a role, truly helps us provide safe products for our patients.
**Pharmacy Times:** How can compounding pharmacies leverage technology to optimize medication therapy and reduce health care costs?
**Arpit Mehta:** The technologies, again, play a role in helping make things safer, but also efficient. So there are times when we adopt technology primarily focusing on safety, that may or may not reduce efficiency, but guess what? Reduce redundancy. It helps us do things once correctly, and all of those things kind of ultimately help us generate some efficiency, help reduce costs and truly focus on what's important is providing the safe care for our patients. So leveraging technology at all different levels, implementing \[and\] embedding RFID technology and our processes, whether it be again, IV, compounding, IV, robotics, oral dispensing and robotics, all of the technology can really help us focus on what's important without truly worrying about or relying on truly just the labor or the staff that need that's needed to truly do that work safely. Technology augments and supplements what we do. Obviously, it doesn't replace anybody any any roles. It truly helps to supplement how we do what we do safely and effectively for our patients.