Digitalizing pharmacies is key to streamlining processes and making healthcare spaces more efficient, but also to prioritizing empathetic, close relationships with patients.
Digital transformation is on everyone’s agenda and is a cross-cutting priority across all sectors of the economy. Although there’s still a long road ahead, healthcare has not been left out — including pharmacies, where digitalization can act as a beacon for development, and technology is essential to “buy time for pharmacists.”
Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, algorithms and robots are some of the tools helping improve process efficiency when dispensing medication. However, removing the human element from patient care is out of the question, especially as pharmacies increasingly become “a key hub for delivering community-based healthcare,” says João Paulo Cabecinha, head of Glintt’s pharma division.
Spread across Portugal, in a highly capillary network, there are 2,920 pharmacies, 90% of which have already begun their digital transformation processes. There are now more than 2,500 locations where Glintt — a Portuguese company specializing in consulting and technology solutions — has already intervened to fulfill its mission of making healthcare professionals’ work easier.
Providing support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the tech company assists more than 15,000 pieces of equipment installed in pharmacies, provides consulting to more than 750 of them, and has installed more than 300 robots, with the aim of driving the sector’s digitalization and turning pharmacies into spaces that are interconnected with other healthcare players.
“It’s not just about bringing software or a robot into the pharmacy to help speed up dispensing a medication,” João Paulo Cabecinha begins by explaining. What truly matters is having the ability to “think through processes,” and this is where the consulting team steps in, rethinking and redesigning in order to help improve the performance of the professionals working in the pharmacy.
From the way the space is designed, to the service areas, to consultation rooms and offices, “the entire space is designed to improve the pharmacy visit, but as an experience that is increasingly meant to be linked with digital channels,” he states.
There are many technology trends that can be adapted to the healthcare sector, although the sensitive nature of the activity requires care not to compromise patient privacy and to preserve a humanized relationship, “one of the most important aspects in this field.”
From algorithm-based mechanisms that help manage stock and orders, to robots that organize and retrieve medication for dispensing, the image of the pharmacist “standing on a stool searching for boxes on the shelves” is a thing of the past.
Making pharmacies even closer to patients is also a step toward easing pressure on the National Health Service (SNS). Pharmacists end up being “on the front line” in responding to patients’ questions, although they still lack tools to connect with hospitals that would truly take this healthcare interconnection to the next level. “There are already many people turning to pharmacies as their first point of contact, but referral is still missing,” João Paulo Cabecinha stresses, explaining that if pharmacists were able to refer patients to non-urgent hospital appointments, “it would ease unnecessary visits to hospital emergency rooms.”
Pharmacies of the future
For João Paulo Cabecinha, the concept to embrace is that of the pharmacy as the “family’s health coach” — that is, a structure that supports patients on their journey toward a healthier life and better quality of life. These spaces should be at the forefront of carrying out screenings, helping with preventive measures, and clarifying doubts in an available and accessible way.
Using digital channels to communicate with citizens will need to become another cross-cutting reality in patient care, although the focus should remain on “the healthcare professional who is closest to us.”
When it comes to changing the operating paradigm of pharmacies in Portugal, the sector has shown itself to be dynamic and with “a strong willingness to rise to this new role, more focused on providing services and less focused solely on dispensing medication,” explains Glintt’s pharma division director.
According to him, pharmacies have had the capacity to support investment in digital transformation, and proof of this is the growth of the tech company’s pharma segment, which now accounts for a third of the entire business and employs 280 people, out of the nearly 1,200 employees at the Portuguese company.
Even so, according to statements made by Ema Paulino, president of the National Association of Pharmacies, to Jornal de Negócios, around 17% of pharmacies are insolvent or under seizure.
For João Paulo Cabecinha, the sector has shown vitality overall — even accounting for the 475 struggling locations — although he does note that certain pharmacies, “due to their characteristics, locations or the populations they serve, face significant difficulties because margins aren’t very comfortable.”
Source: Dinheiro Vivo
