Pharmacists are the missing link for health technology firms facing mounting competitive pressures and rapid growth.
Pharmacists are highly trained members of the health-care team, with knowledge in therapeutics, patient-behaviour and system-level thinking. Through their expertise, pharmacists can help technology first find clinical value, adoption and market reception.
Working with health technology firms is an opportunity for pharmacists to make full use of their education and experience. Exploring new roles in the health-care technology space is not only beneficial for the profession, but also essential to ensuring the industry delivers on its promises.
AI is reshaping health care at breakneck speed, from drug discovery to predictive analytics and digital health tools. Amid this transformation, the right stakeholders must be at the table. Otherwise, AI in health care risks becoming clinically impressive yet practically unusable, disconnected from real care delivery and the lived experiences of patients.
Digital tools rarely fail because of the science behind them. More often, the problem is fit. Solutions do not integrate into workflows, overlook patient realities, or cannot scale sustainably.
AI may have massive datasets but data without context is blind.
AI may have massive datasets but data without context is blind. Pharmacists make AI clinically relevant, grounded in practice and ready for adoption, with expertise in workflow design, process optimization and systems thinking – skills essential for turning AI into tools that work in practice.
Pharmacists’ daily interactions with patients mirror a core principle of user research: staying as close as possible to the end user. In technology, surveys and interviews often miss the nuances of real behaviour; the deepest insights come from observing users in context. Pharmacists live in that context every day. Embedded in the patient journey, pharmacists see firsthand the barriers of adherence, access, and health literacy. That visibility translates into product roadmaps that are credible, relevant, and impactful.
Pharmacists are not end-users of AI. They are co-architects. To unlock the full promise of AI in health care, industry leaders must move beyond seeing pharmacists as dispensers of medication and instead engage them as strategic partners in innovation.
While pharmacist expertise is essential in companies like MedEssist, MedMe, Asepha, Medi-Scribe and Aiskyra that focus on pharmacist workflow, pharmacists also can bring value to technology companies that offer value outside the pharmacist scope of work.
In Canada, health technology companies like ODAIA use AI to optimize pharmaceutical strategy by combining predictive analytics to help pharmaceutical companies engage health-care providers in a more patient-focused and strategic manner. To deliver on this goal, pharmacist leaders are essential.
The profession of pharmacy is at an unprecedented point of growth, and pharmacists can use their visibility and expertise as health-care providers to accelerate positive change in health care. This means more job opportunities for pharmacists, as well as new pathways for specialized credentials in this space.
In a world pushing toward data-driven systems and algorithms, pharmacists can safeguard the human element of care by acting as a nexus between health and technology.
