The Pharmacy 5.0 framework: A new paradigm to accelerate innovation for large-scale personalized pharmacy care

Extract

Annually, millions of patients are adversely affected by nonoptimized medication therapy, resulting in an annual cost of $528 billion in hospitalizations and emergency room and physician visits in 2016 in the US.^1-3 Non-optimized medication therapy can manifest during a patient’s journey through healthcare, from inappropriate diagnosis or prescribing to adherence issues or suboptimal therapeutic outcomes, and is a significant health challenge.⁴ Despite the literature describing issues and solutions, sustained effective solutions have remained elusive.

An opportunity exists to address nonoptimized medication therapy and its challenges. Research has focused on segments within a patient’s journey, such as providing the correct medication for a condition, evaluating its effects weeks later, overcoming barriers to adherence, and how providers impact adherence. There has been no overarching integrated framework to connect these segments while cohesively driving innovations in pharmacy.

Paradigm shift and framework are required

Pharmacy is continually aspiring to transform from the transaction-based business model of dispensing medications to a more interdisciplinary, patient-centric care model.⁵ The aim of this integrated care model is to improve patients’ quality of care and outcomes with cost-effective and efficient approaches. Personalized pharmacy care requires an in-depth understanding of patients’ needs, accounting for not only socioeconomic factors but also biological, behavioral, and cultural factors. To achieve this goal, the profession must transform from a model heavily weighted toward distribution functions to one focused on enhanced clinical roles, becoming health management centers providing more extensive, integrated, and higher-quality clinical services. Due to recent technological and clinical advances, a paradigm shift and a framework are required to resolve professional and operational challenges.⁶ The aim is to draw on the industrial revolution and develop similar processes in pharmacy.