I touched on this in my last post, creating time for patients is always going to be at the forefront of the desperate struggle between administrative tasks and actual face to face interactions, so let's consider how AI can actually help with this.
When those services inevitably arrive on the scene, what is really going to make a difference to how your pharmacy is run, and for the long lost dream of an actual sit down tea break!

AI has already been utilised in other industries to reduce administrative tasks allowing staff to better focus time and resources on customers. Below is a summary of where AI could potentially be utilised to improve efficiency in pharmacy practice. 

Error checking & dispensing validation:

AI is great at flagging anomalies, especially when it can pull on the data of thousands of pharmacies across the country. Your accuracy checks may power the way for the data that will allow alerts to flag if something isn’t quite right. 

Automated reminders and alerts:

Many pharmacies already use a range of different calendar systems, notification alerts and more, but what if those alerts could consider change in habits or seasons, or even out of stock warnings.
Utilising the data within your individual pharmacy, stock booking in systems, combined with the data from error checking and dispensing alerts could give customers an accurate time to collect their medication. Even factoring in when the pharmacy might be less busy, or more staff might be available to assist. Other factors that can be included in such AI alerts include, notifying of closure times, and altering pick up times to avoid the supplier tote-mountain in the morning. You could even provide “we are very busy right now” type notifications for those due to collect right now, or provide accurate timings for when prescriptions will be ready to be collected. 

Personalized Marketing and Loyalty Programs:

Hook up that alert system to an AI driven personalised marketing campaigns and loyalty programs. By targeting specific customer segments with relevant promotions and discounts, pharmacies can increase customer retention and overall sales, positively impacting gross profit.

Efficient Inventory Management:

AI systems can optimise inventory levels, reducing wastage and ensuring that essential medications are always in stock.
You might know that a lot of the big companies like Amazon and the large chain supermarkets all use AI now to predict, price and pick stock. But these technologies will be available regardless of the size or the location of the pharmacy. As long as there is data to feed in, there is data to be collected, analysed and processed.

What if your system was able to tap into last year's data, and see that pollen counts were rising faster earlier this year than normal, it could have the extra cetirizine on the shelf before the first sniffling customers comes through the door. 

Cold weather coming quicker than expected this year? The system would be ordering those hot water bottles before you’ve even had time to have your first cold cup of tea that morning. How about we connect that inventory management system into the patient alert system, buy one get one free on hot water bottles, added to your Facebook page. 

Data is for life not just for Christmas Seasonal Sales:

AI algorithms can analyse historical sales data, seasonal trends, and other relevant factors to predict demand accurately. By optimising inventory levels, pharmacies can reduce holding costs, prevent overstocking or stockouts, and ultimately increase gross profit margins.

Social Media :

The rise of the Social Media Manager has been truly the job of the last decade. But we can’t all have our own one, so most of the time we occasionally post bits and pieces to Facebook, AI has already come into its own and even the most seasoned SMM will occasionally dabble in the AI generated posts and use it to help them write something quickly. 

Below is an example of a SM post generated in less than a second with a free web application advertising your deal on hot water bottles, (even if they haven’t been ordered in advance by magical AI and only by the good grace that you saw that email from EMT when you did.)

Keywords used “Write a Facebook post for a pharmacy advertising hot water bottle deal buy one get one free”

Staff Time and Holiday Planning:

I don’t need to talk about “ifs” here, AI is already being used in many commercially available Rota Management Apps, almost all of the top companies are using some form of AI in their Rota Management Apps at this point. 

Conclusion:

Perhaps I’ve been cheating by calling some of these potential AI solutions AI at all. AI after all is just guesswork and predictions based on pre-existing data. It works on information you give it and makes guesses based on how we’ve told it to guess. It’s probably not the AI we had envisioned in Sci-fi. AI sounds new and fancy, it’s that young whippersnapper on the scene with his new jacket, but it’s just his granddad’s leather jacket from the 60s and honestly it’s a huge PITA to write “Data-driven solutions” instead of the handy “AI”. 

AI in Pharmacy isn’t just inevitable it’s probably already here in some form or another.
Humans have been making data driven decisions since the dawn of time, we call it experience. But we are pretty slow at doing that, so if the option arises, and it isn’t going to make you morally (or worse still financially) bankrupt, consider how you might put a price on what that AI does for you. 

AI should be used for the streamlining of administrative tasks, facilitated by automation, which empowers pharmacy staff to redirect their focus towards enhanced patient care.
AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants can contribute to an elevated customer experience by providing immediate and accurate responses to simple inquiries, thereby bolstering overall customer satisfaction. Additionally, the utilisation of AI for data analytics, such as invoice and price checking, financial health assessments, and social media, serves as a multifaceted approach to enhance operational efficiency and ensure that pharmacy practices can keep up with the ever changing face of the healthcare sphere. Overall, the incorporation of AI technologies has the potential to optimise workflows, improve patient care, and elevate the overall effectiveness of community pharmacies.

And how much is that worth to you in your business? - that’s a question for another post.