Evaluating Your Journey to Achieving the Autonomous Pharmacy 

Ken Perez
Vice President, Healthcare Policy, Omnicell

Overreliance on manual processes and siloed technology in pharmacy operations are among the biggest challenges facing health systems today.  

Furthermore, there are no standardized benchmarks available to guide pharmacy leaders in their quest to achieve improvements in areas such as safety, efficiency, regulatory compliance, financial performance, and human resource management.  

The Autonomous Pharmacy is a bold new vision for the future of medication management for health systems, leveraging pharmacy automation, pharmacy data intelligence, and technology-enabled IV compounding robot services to improve the safety and accuracy of every aspect of the drug delivery process. The goal of this industry movement is to achieve zero-error medication management, while freeing pharmacists to practice at the top of their license. 

How can hospitals accurately benchmark and evaluate their processes and solutions to determine where they fall in the journey to the Autonomous Pharmacy?  

The Autonomous Pharmacy Advisory Board, a collective of pharmacy and nursing leaders from leading health systems across the country, has developed a new interactive tool to help pharmacy and healthcare leaders identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement across five key areas:  

Enterprise Structure: In a fully autonomous pharmacy, data flows seamlessly and is completely visible throughout the medication use process and across the full continuum of care.  

Data Intelligence: At the highest level, data intelligence incorporates health and business outcomes data to provide prescriptive, actionable advice for decision-makers.  

Automation: Data-driven automation in a fully autonomous pharmacy supports coherent, predictive medication management across all key pharmacy enterprise processes.  

IT Infrastructure: The highest levels of pharmacy automation and technology infrastructure provide access to integrated layers of powerful, flexible IT services. 

Human Activity: In a fully autonomous pharmacy, the human activities of the pharmacy enterprise primarily address the most difficult clinical, social, and financial medication-use problems that patients face. 

Nilesh Desai, MBA, BS, RPh, CPPS, Chief Pharmacy Officer of Baptist Health in Louisville, Ky., is using the self-assessment tool to formulate a fully automated, interoperable and connected medication management strategy. 

Join Nilesh and me at an upcoming Scottsdale Institute event, scheduled for Thursday, Feb 25 at 11:00 AM PT, to discuss the value of an Autonomous Pharmacy self-assessment and how you can transform your pharmacy operations through technology. Register today by clicking here. 

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author(s). These views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and may not be held in perpetuity.