The State of Pharmacy Technology

Recently I’ve found myself thinking about the state of pharmacy technology. Why? Simple, really. I’m bored and have been doing a little extracurricular reading. Not to mention that a few things have popped up here and there to pique my interest. It’s not one single piece of technology but rather a collection of technologies and interactions I’ve had over the past 18 months. 

• I think it started with EdgeX, a new technology for tracking things. An old acquaintance reached out to me “to pick my brain”. You know how that goes. I’ve had two trusted and respected mentors during my career that told me to never let someone “pick your brain” or “buy you a cup of coffee”. Apparently it’s code for can I get something out of you for free. With that said, I have no reason to hold out on anyone. I had my chance. 
• Then came Compounding360, a product by Pharmacy Stars. Nothing new, but an approach that caught on with a lot of people. The healthcare system I work for decided to implement Compounding360. Even though I wasn’t involved with the process, it was installed at my facility, which meant I had to become familiar with it. 
• Two people contacted me about blogs that I wrote years ago. 
• I received an email advertisement for a new “smart hood”, which I attended. A product that more than captured my attention. I worked on something similar in the 2010-2012 era. 
• I received another email advertisement for a product that uses AI to detect poor sterile compounding technique. Again, something I had worked on in the same time period as the item above. I need to dig out my notebooks and find exactly when I was musing about these things.
• I read something on LinkedIn, a place I almost never go, about DoseEdge sunsetting sometime in the next few years. Yet another thing I wrote about a years ago.
• And most recently, I had a brief email exchange with someone I met over 10 years ago when I was working for Talyst. 

It wasn’t until I found myself thinking about these things deeply that it hit me, are we really starting to see movement in pharmacy technology? Maybe. Or it could simply be that this has been going on around me continuously and I failed to notice. The latter is probably more true than the former, but I have no way of knowing. I’ve been locked into dreadfully boring work for the past 6-7 years, so the world of pharmacy technology may have been growing steadily this entire time. 

One thing that I find thrilling is many of these products were ideas and concepts we had long ago. I recall working on a “smart hood” more than a decade ago. I can remember sketching out hoods to detect poor sterile compounding using Microsoft Kinect (remember the Kinect?). Compounding360 is a platform that has been designed many times by many companies in one form or another. My brother, Robert and I discussed the use of “geofencing” with cellular technology to track health care items back when the first iPhone came out, which reminds me of what EdgeX is doing. It may not be exactly the same, but the concept is similar. 

As they say – I don’t know who “they” are but they certainly say a lot – timing is everything. Perhaps the timing simply wasn’t right back then. Regardless, it’s cool to see some of these things finally becoming reality.