Telepharmacy

Me as a thinker: 

Health and health-care problems are varied and extensive all over the world and it potentially threatens the majority of people. Health and health-care facilities are generally poor and it directly reflects the mode of life. The majority of people live in poverty and deprivation, while the nation's small wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. In rural areas, there is poor nutrition and sanitation, inadequate housing for most families and the absence of modern medical care and other social services. The rich live comparatively in access to the services but what about poor people in rural areas? 

Me as a pharmacist: 

I see many scopes of the pharmacy profession and pharmacy subject like production and manufacturing, formulation development, quality assurance and quality control, research, and development, hospital pharmacy, community pharmacy, academics, marketing, government jobs, entrepreneurship, nuclear pharmacy, telepharmacy, pharmacotherapy, cosmetics, forensic pharmacy, medical transcription, biotechnology and so on. There is numerous scope of pharmacy all over the world. Among which telepharmacy is one of the scope of pharmacy which is discussed below. 

Telepharmacy is the area of pharmacy of delivering a pharmaceutical service to the patients through telecommunication like the telephone network, radio broadcasting system, fax, computer networks, and internet. It provides pharmaceutical care and services to the patient of distant places where there is no or may not have a pharmacist. It is especially used in rural areas. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy defines telepharmacy as "the provision of pharmaceutical care through the use of telecommunication and information technologies to patients at a distance." 

American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) provide information that telepharmacy may include pharmacist activities such as drug review and monitoring, dispensing, verification of oral and sterile compounding, patient assessment, patient counseling, and medication therapy management. 

Medication Therapy Management (MTM), defined telepharmacy as “it is a service or group of services that optimize therapeutic outcomes for individual patients. 

Telepharmacy services include drug use review, drug therapy monitoring, counseling, verifying a prescription, providing clinical training and monitoring of formulary compliance. 

Telepharmacy works as follows: 

Patient takes their prescription to local telepharmacy and give it to pharmacy technician. A pharmacy technician prepares a prescription for dispensing by pharmacist. Then he sends the prescription to the pharmacist where pharmacists review the patient medication profile like drug interaction, adverse drug reaction and other potential problem. 

Once the pharmacists approve the prescription, the pharmacy technician brings the patient to counseling room for counseling by the pharmacist on the proper use of their medication via live and interactive video counseling session. Then medication is dispensed to a patient. 

Advantages of telepharmacy: 

a. Availability of pharmaceutical care and services in rural areas which help the people and patients of those areas to have a good quality life. 

b. Reduce the cost of traveling in distant places for the same services. 

c. Patient’s safety is improved through counseling, prescription verification and ensuring the right use of medication. 

d. Patient convenience. 

e. Reduces medication errors, adverse drug interaction, and drug over/underdose. 

f. Inventory is controlled which decreases drug cost. 

g. More staffs and employee are not required. 

h. One pharmacist can guide and serve several places at a time. 

Disadvantages of telepharmacy: 

a. Lack of proper control in the dispensing of medications to the patient. 

b. Lack of interaction between patient and pharmacist during counseling can create biased information. 

c. Special training and knowledge are required to patient and staffs concerning the use of telepharmacy. 

d. As this service is given in the absence of a registered pharmacist, it may increase the risk of error while delivering medication to the patient. 

References: 

1. Ministry of Health and Population in collaboration of WHO. September 27, 2011. 

2. "Remote dispensing machines to be tested in UK hospitals".The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacy. 2: 203–204. July–August 2010. 

"Tele-Pharmacy on Show at Mannings Stores in Hong Kong"(PDF). Thistle: The Magazine of Jardine Matheson. 3: 8. 2010. Retrieved 8 August 2013.

Article By: Nisha Joshi ( Pharmacist, 2019)