Precision Medicine for Practicing Pharmacists

Julie Johnson, PharmD, Dean of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, discusses how practicing pharmacists can implement and use precision medicine in their everyday work. This video was filmed at the 2019 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Julie Johnson, PharmD: I think I would argue that in some ways pharmacists always have been a little focused on precision medicine—we think about their smoking status, we think about drug-drug interactions, we've always thought about pharmacogenetics as we use or dose drugs, and those are all pieces of precision medicine I would argue.

As it relates to pharmacogenetics I think there's, really regardless of the sector where somebody practices, I think there are great opportunities in the community setting. I think the community model is struggling, obviously it's in a difficult space right now, and I think this is perhaps an opportunity to differentiate and create a value and a benefit for patients int that setting.

In the health system, but more ambulatory setting, a bunch of the most commonly used drugs are ones that we can use genetic information to guide decisions about those, and so ambulatory care practitioners focused on chronic diseases, there's a lot of information there.