Pharmacy 3.0 – a Vision for the Future of Pharmacy

I’m excited about the future of the profession of pharmacy, Pharmacy 3.0.

I’m excited about the future of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

More surprisingly, I’m also excited about the future of pharmacies, although I think that many will be left scared by the monumental changes that are taking place.

Why am I excited, I hear you ask?

I’m excited because I think we are about to enter a new age for pharmacy, and I will coin the phrase Pharmacy 3.0. Why 3.0?

I qualified in 1993, which was an age ago. In 1993, we were in Pharmacy 1.0. A pharmacist was a community, hospital, or industry pharmacist, and there wasn’t much movement between sectors. The role was primarily to supply medication, with a contribution to care but on a limited level.

Pharmacy 2.0 started relatively recently in 2014 when the government started to investigate, at scale, the difference pharmacy professionals could make in patient outcomes in primary and secondary care. However, the impact was limited – not enough pharmacists and technicians working in primary care and too few of those pharmacists with IP status. In the last year, the numbers have increased. Still, the impact pharmacy professionals could make was limited by the prescriptive focus of the ARRS-funded clinical pharmacist focusing on IIF targets.

Taking away the mandated focus for clinical pharmacists and focusing on increasing patient access and improving patient feedback, now that we have a significant number of IP Pharmacists with significant experience in primary care, means that we are ready for Pharmacy 3.0.

So what could Pharmacy 3.0 look like?

In the community pharmacy sector, there will be a change in focus from buildings to people. Since I qualified (and probably for a long time before that), the pharmacy profession has been obsessed with buildings rather than the professionals working there. Going forward, there will be fewer high-street pharmacies, and an increasing number of patients will rely on Internet pharmacies. Let’s not fight the inevitable and claim we can keep all pharmacies open. As the Baby Boomer generation makes way for Generation X, as the predominant generation for prescribed medications, there will be less use of high street pharmacies and more online pharmacy utilisation.

 There will be a reversal in pharmacy ownership with fewer pharmacies owned by multiples and more owner-managed community pharmacies. This will mean a greater ability to evolve the service to meet the needs of the local population, something that the large multiples have always struggled to do.

In Primary Care, Pharmacists will take on the mantle of Medication Leads. Pharmacists will take over responsibility for prescribing budgets in addition to the responsibility that the NHS derives maximum benefit from the investment in medication. Currently, pharmacists play second fiddle to medics in Primary and Secondary care, but if the issue is medication-related, and we are the experts in medication, why should that remain the case in the future?

Some parts of England, this has already started with Secondary Care Chief Pharmacists taking on responsibility for employing, training and managing clinical pharmacists and technicians across an ICS footprint.

Change is scary and the pace of change for pharmacies, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians will accelerate over the next few years but as we progress through Pharmacy 3.0 the pharmacy professionals will finally realise their full potential so don’t worry pharmacy folks, we’ve got this!

Get in touch to find out more about Pharmacy 3.0

To discuss Pharmacy 3.0 further and how Medacy can help you make the most of a forward-thinking, professional, reliable clinical services provider call Medacy on 01677 252201 or complete the Contact Us on the Medacy website.