Five Trends Transforming Pharmacies into Wellness Centers of the Future

In 2013, Neill Blomkamp's futuristic action thriller film “Elysium” introduced miraculous “med-pods” to the world. After just a minute inside this pod, a patient with cancer would come out completely healed.

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Although this is still a mere Hollywood fantasy, in reality, our world is constantly moving toward similar breakthroughs in health care. Many of these miracles-in-the-making have a digital backbone, driven by technologies such as AI, robotics, IoT, cloud, machine learning, advanced data and analytics. Currently, innovation and disruption in the digital health and wellness space are now even radically breaking barriers and fast-forwarding frontiers in the world of the trusted neighborhood pharmacy, too.

A vital part of the health care ecosystem, pharmacies were frequently the first port of call during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for health and wellness needs, as people struggled with the new virus. Pharmacies provided a range of expanded services including preventive medicines, vaccinations, advisory, equipment, nutritional supplements, testing services, drive-through and online delivery, and virtual primary care as they catered to patient needs during that crucial period.

A lot has changed for pharmacies within a short time, and at the same time, there is increasing pressure on them to deliver on its share of health care cost reduction. Lower costs mean lower reimbursements and revenues for pharmacies and health care providers.

As a result, pharmacies are seeking additional avenues to generate revenues. All of these changes are redefining the role of pharmacies in the future. Analyzing these changes, here are the 5 key trends that will chart a new role for the pharmacy of the future:

1. Pharmacies will become wellness destinations

Navigating health care in the United States is particularly complex, with disparities prevailing in terms of quality of care, cost, and access. With advancing technology, the emphasis will be on improving productivity, simplifying access to care, and enhancing customer experience.

Beyond dispensing medications, pharmacies will look to expand their service offerings to provide holistic and personalized care to their customers. Pharmacies can reduce the burden on emergency facilities by providing convenient primary care services in their neighborhoods.

The importance of mental health will also increase manifold in the future, and pharmacies will play a key role in providing mental health care services, including screenings, education, and preventive care. Thus, pharmacies will become wellness destinations—like one-stop shops offering individualized services encompassing physical and mental health care, wellness packages, preventive treatment, and community outreach.

2. The role of pharmacists and technicians will be elevated

Most pharmacists are well-qualified to provide a wide range of health care services, beyond dispensing medication. They have the qualifications and knowledge to advise patients on drug and therapy choices and provide counseling to help manage health conditions.

However, pharmacists spend most of their time and effort in dispensing prescription drugs and handling regulatory paperwork, which can be easily automated. Furthermore, the recent pandemic has put severe stress on pharmacy workers.

There is a scarcity of pharmacists and technicians, which has led to highly stressful work environments for pharmacy workers. To counter this, we will see technological solutions to ease the burden on pharmacists.

Strategies such as workload sharing and intelligent workforce management that enable teamwork, collaboration, and greater efficiencies in manpower will be used to reduce the workload on busy pharmacies. Using intelligent automation, manual steps will be reduced to free up the valuable time of pharmacists.

Data and analytics will provide useful intelligence to understand customer needs and enable strategic planning, allowing the elevation of the roles of pharmacists and technicians, moving higher up the value chain into patient consultation, advisory, and customized care.

3. Many channels, but a single experience

More and more customers are moving toward mail-order or online pharmacies for generic maintenance medications. Specialty pharmacies for complex treatments are picking up pace.

Home services, in which certified clinicians visit patients at home and dispense medicines, are also emerging. Digital therapeutics and remote monitoring are making administering of medicines faster and easier.

Combining these physical and virtual services into a multi-channel experience allows customers to access the pharmacy’s products and services through the channel that is most convenient for them. Customers can access these services through a single window or “digital front door” to make for a seamless experience.

To enable new modes of dispensing medicines, pharmacies will modernize by making use of advanced technologies such as AI and ML, analytics, and cloud computing. Although these developments will be rapid, the guiding mantra will be to ease and enhance patient experience.

4. Innovation will rule the roost

Increasing productivity by empowering pharmacists, finding efficiencies, and improving patient experience will be core tenets steering the way forward for pharmacies. Significant investments in innovation will bring together various stakeholders to power transformation of the entire pharmacy industry.

Building “composable” architectures, unearthing intelligence to power experience-led platforms to serve patients better, and finding ways to price medicines strategically are just some areas in which innovation in technology will rule the roost. Similarly, intelligent automation can help optimize specialty prescriptions, blockchains can incorporate smart contracting to reduce friction in the revenue cycle and supply chain, whereas AR/VR will help improve medication adherence. Meanwhile, “super apps” can enable single-window access to services, while the metaverse will speed up technology training.

Pharmacies are also innovating to embrace pay-for-performance programs from the current product reimbursement program. The focus of the pay-for-performance program (from a pharmacy standpoint) is to leverage the trust that the patients have in the pharmacy to provide more positive input into the outcomes that the patients are seeking.

Community pharmacies, in their current incarnation, have closer ties to both patients and payers in addition to ties to health care providers and drug manufacturers. Pharmacies have an opportunity to collaborate with payers and patients in the identification and development of different programs, such as clinical programming, value initiatives, and performance incentives.

5. Precision medicine will alter the entire ecosystem

Precision medicine and treatment of diseases using individual genomic data and DNA will allow for more accurate methods of diagnosis, reduce the risk of adverse drug events, and decrease health care costs in the long-term. Biosimilar use is predicted to increase significantly over the next 5 years, potentially saving billions of health care dollars.

Indeed, pharmaceutical companies are already creating hubs to train hospitals and open clinics to dispense these medications. Pharmacies are using cost control techniques such as prior authorization and step therapy to incentivize the use of biosimilars. This space represents a significant opportunity for major players in the health care system, and they will surely seek to capitalize on it in the not-too-distant future.

While humanity has already found adequate treatments for many common diseases, the past few years have shown that more complexities are emerging in dealing with other diseases, viruses, and pathogens. However, we are edging toward a world in which everyone’s DNA is mapped, and where we can be even more proactive in terms of tackling our most pressing challenges.

British gerontologist Aubry de Grey famously stated that the first person who will live to be 150 years old has already been born. With advances in medicine, future generations will most likely be able to arrest or stop aging periodically. Perhaps a person will be able to pop a pill and rid themselves of disease in one go, and diabetics taking insulin shots every day currently may only need to do so once a month, or even at longer intervals in the future.

With so many radical developments in medicine and technology unfolding at once, the role and potential of the pharmacy as we know it is evolving at breakneck speed. Once a place known only for dispensing medicine, the pharmacy will soon be the place we all go to when we need fixing—a place known for winning combinations of clinicians capable of providing primary care, and offerings of the most precise medicines and treatments. In essence, they will become our healing centers and wellness destinations, tending to the holistic health needs of patients and customers.

The lengthy processes that patients face in today’s health care institutions will be simplified, or may even be eliminated, because of the preventive health and wellness activities provided by the pharmacy of the future that we can all look forward to—a pharmacy in which the future looks drastically different and unique, where technology is integrated, where medical and wellness services are streamlined, and customers can finally enjoy a unified, pain-free journey to better health.

About the Author

Nitin Kumar, vice president and senior managing partner, Digital Health & Wellness, Business Transformation Group — Tata Consultancy (TCS), is responsible for managing and growing TCS’ digital health and wellness business globally as the vice president and senior managing partner of the Business Transformation Group. Prior to this role, he was the Vice President and Global Head of TCS’ Healthcare Business Unit. He has been part of TCS' growth journey for over 25 years, leading growth for TCS businesses across various industries, including healthcare, life sciences, energy, and financial services.Nitin is a passionate leader focused on helping customers achieve their strategic growth and transformation objectives, leveraging the power of innovation, digital technologies, and cross-industry learning. Being a firm believer in the core values of the TATA group, he has built and nurtured key partnerships while collaborating with diverse teams across several Fortune 100 enterprises.Nitin is a distinguished alumnus of the Delhi College of Engineering and has completed the executive leadership program from Ross Business School, University of Michigan. He has extensive global experience, having lived and worked internationally in countries including Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, United States, and India. He is currently based out of Connecticut in the United States.