Could a Robot Do Your Job?

Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Pharmacists?

The question that pharmacists need to ask themselves is, “Could my job function be replaced by artificial intelligence?” Many would respond confidently with a no. According to Geoff Colvin of Fortune magazine, author of Talent is Overrated and Humans are Underrated, if your job does not have human behavior in its function, you would be quite surprised to hear you are replaceable. Computers and robots cannot show empathy, compassion, sympathy or collaboration. Artificial intelligence (AI) can check drug-drug interactions, drug-disease state interactions and make recommendations and much more.  AI can check medication compounding and final product with better accuracy than human accuracy. To survive long-term, pharmacists need to provide more than just a final verification with order entry and final product.

Pharmacists’ jobs are a big target for more automation especially since medication errors are a big issue in public health safety. According to the Institute of Medicine, an estimated 7,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are due to preventable medication errors. Medication errors also cost about $16.4 billion annually. Pharmacists are slowly being replaced at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center and are responsible for receiving prescriptions, packaging, and dispensing.

Pharmacists need to collaborate with other healthcare professionals

Pharmacists need working relationships with physicians and other healthcare professionals in the hospital or in the ambulatory care setting. We need to be a valid member of the healthcare team offering real-time advice and recommendations on patients during rounds. We also need improved communication. If we merely sit in a seat in the same room of a hospital entering orders and checking the final product, we could easily be replaced by artificial intelligence.

It becomes even more vital for the Pharmacist Provider Status bill to pass simply to help add billable functions to our role instead of just billing for product. I have no doubt with the right system and hospitals willing to pay for the technology, pharmacists could lose their role in order entry and checking. We make mistakes because we are human and checking is not a complicated process. We already have the potential to allow computer systems to do the allergy checking and drug interaction checking for us without much of a thought. We now have prescribers entering orders directly into the computer. It is not unfathomable for a computer to check what the prescriber entered with much more accuracy than a pharmacist for less money.

Pharmacists need to be involved with direct patient care.

Medication reconciliation is a place where pharmacists could have patient contact and ensure that medications are entered correctly into the electronic medical record. Pharmacists could be more involved in warfarin and diabetic education collaborating with other professionals. Pharmacists could also be involved with educating patients about their medications before they leave the hospital. All of these things do cost money for the hospital since they are mostly not billable, but the pharmacist would be able to do more than what a computer could do alone.

A computer is unable to replace human interaction. Pharmacists need to bring more value to the healthcare table than functions that can be done by artificial intelligence.