August 2024 Pharmacy AI Newsletter

Welcome to the Inaugural Issue of AI.pothecary!

Greetings to our fellow pharmacy professionals and artificial intelligence enthusiasts! We are thrilled to introduce?AI.pothecary, a new newsletter crafted at the intersection of pharmacy and AI. It is designed to bring you the latest events, insightful publications, and intriguing developments from both fields.

This initiative is driven by a dedicated team of pharmacy students, with myself overseeing the editorial direction. Our goal is to foster a community where pharmacists, researchers, technologists, and students can share knowledge, discuss innovations, and explore the future of pharmacy through the lens of artificial intelligence.

In each issue, we will bring you curated content that includes upcoming conferences, breakthrough research papers, industry news, and more. Whether you are a professional looking to stay ahead of the curve, a student eager to learn about cutting-edge technologies, or simply an enthusiast curious about the evolving role of AI in healthcare, AI.pothecary has something for you.

We invite you to join us on this exciting journey to explore how AI can transform the field of pharmacy. Dive into our pages, discover new ideas, and engage with a community of like-minded individuals passionate about the future of healthcare.

Happy reading!

How are pharmacy educators taking on AI?

The annual AACP meeting wrapped up at the end of July in Boston, where pharmacy educators across the US gathered to share research and ideas. Interestingly, several of these sessions were focused on AI with several noticeable trends:

• Using AI for Work: Namely, how to think about AI as a tool in the construction of education materials, communication, and other content on a day-to-day basis. Overall, issues here are that not all programs will cover the costs for faculty, and many educators are utilizing the tools on their own. There is a larger need to develop some workshops to help facilitate peer education on how we use this on a day-to-day basis and how to leverage it.
• Concerns on Students' use of AI: A large concern is related to whether AI may diminish students' critical thinking. On another hand, there is also the concern that limited integration of AI may diminish students ability to then participate in an evolving workforce. Several programs are taking AI head-on and trying to integrate it into their curriculum.
• Novel Education Opportunities: Several examples were showcased, such as the use of VR/MR/AR technologies for simulation experiences, such as compounding, and the creation of mock patient experiences with AI tools outside of current free LLMs.

Pharmacy AI Policies:

This year both the American Pharmacist Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists took on the challenge of creating policy to address artificial intelligence. Their House of Delegates both met during their annual meetings to modify and vote upon these policy advancements on how they will approach AI. Both regard the oppurtunity to leverage AI as a tool to help with pharmacy operations and patient care, but also to consider the ethical concerns of replacing pharmacists with such tools.

• APhA 2024 Policy Update
• ASHP 2024 Policy Update

FDA and AI: Why even care?

The FDA put out a blog piece on AI this past month, and it outlines some of the key questions raised on how this group will tackle AI advancement. Its a good piece to read, and we encourage those that are asking how the FDA is going to look at AI tools in healthcare to give it a good read.

It looks like they will seek to create a framework and standards in the future, but recognize its going to take a lot of work. Areas they hope to address in the near future includes:

• Standards, best practices, and operational tools
• Quality assurance laboratories
• Transparency and accountability
• Risk management for AI models in health care

AI Pharmacy Case Use:?

• Taiwan Hospital use of AI CoPilot?(July 12, 2024, Microsoft) Chi Mei Medical Center in Taiwan has deployed AI copilots, supported by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, to assist healthcare professionals like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. These AI tools help streamline tasks by integrating data from various sources, offering features like medication interaction checks and insurance verification. The initiative aims to reduce the workload on medical staff, allowing them to focus more on patient care and improving overall efficiency.?
• Plenful CEO Interview on AI use in Pharmacy?(July 19, 2024, Mobihealthnews)?Joy Liu, CEO of Plenful, discusses the impact of AI in reducing manual work in pharmacies. With a shortage of pharmacy technicians and increasing compliance challenges, AI can automate routine tasks, such as inventory management and prescription verification. This technology helps streamline operations, reduce errors, and allow pharmacists to focus more on patient care.?
• Asepha Founder Interview on AI Pharmacy Automation?(July 19, 2024, Healthcare IT Today)?Asepha is automating pharmacy workflows to enhance patient access by reducing administrative burdens on pharmacists. Using AI, Asepha aims to free pharmacists from manual tasks, allowing them to focus more on patient care. This shift could lead to more efficient medication reviews and better patient interactions. Asepha’s CEO, Eunice Wu, emphasizes that pharmacists are highly accessible yet underutilized in healthcare, and this technology aims to maximize their potential in clinical services.?
• CVS to Integrate AI into Pharmacy?(July 24, 2024, Inc.com)?CVS Health is set to launch a conversational AI chatbot to streamline customer interactions about prescriptions, utilizing natural language processing to ease workloads amid industry challenges while adhering to strict privacy standards.?
• How Amazon Pharmacy is using AI to deliver medications faster as it expands same-day delivery?(Mar 26, 2024, fiercehealthcare)?A blog about how Amazon Pharmacy has expanded its same-day medication delivery service to New York City and Los Angeles, utilizing AI to optimize delivery routes and improve service efficiency, with plans to expand to more cities.?

AI Healthcare Business News:??

• OpenAI teams up with Thrive Global?(July 7, 2024, Time)?The article highlights the transformative potential of AI-driven personalized behavior changes in tackling chronic diseases by optimizing daily habits, emphasizing the need for rigorous privacy and safety measures in healthcare integration.?
• McKinsey GenAI Healthcare Adoption Report (July 25, 2024) An interesting report that covers how health companies have adopted GenAI, ROI on adoption, and hurdles seen with adoption.

• HCPs want AI to personalize, summarize medical education content: survey?(June 27, 2024, fierce pharma)?A blog that talks about a survey by MedAll and CMI Media Group, revealing that healthcare professionals see AI as a potential enhancer of medical education through features like video summaries and personalized content, despite mixed trust levels.?

• Google Health Announces initial AI Startups for Growth Cohort?(July 26, 2024, Google Health)?A three-month hybrid initiative aimed at supporting AI-driven healthcare startups in EMEA with growth skills, internationalization strategies, and responsible innovation tools.?

Research Papers:?

• Integration of AI for Drug Supply Chain in China Case Study?(July 15, 2024, Frontiers in Pharmacology)?The study highlights the successful application of AI and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) systems in enhancing drug supply chain management within Chinese hospitals, focusing on significant improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction.?
• Researchers concerned on AI Vision Models?(July 23, 2024, Nature Digital Medicine)?The study evaluates the expert-level accuracy of the multimodal GPT-4 vision in medical diagnostics, revealing significant flaws in its image comprehension and rationale formulation despite high accuracy scores. It underscores the necessity of in-depth evaluations before integrating such AI tools into clinical practices, emphasizing that correct answers often lacked proper understanding or reasoning.?

• Large language models for preventing medication direction errors in online pharmacies?(25 April 2024, Nature Medicine)?The study evaluates the MEDIC system, an AI-driven approach to preventing medication direction errors in online pharmacies. It demonstrates that MEDIC significantly reduces errors by integrating comprehensive data checks and AI analysis, improving the accuracy and safety of medication instructions.?

• Ethical and regulatory challenges of large language models in medicine?(April 23, 2024)?A publication from Lancet, with the increased use of LLM’s some crucial and profound ethical concerns are emerging, especially in the medical field.?

• AI Will Change Pharmacy; Pharmacists Must Step Up Now?(March 1, 2024, PLOS ONE)? The article emphasizes the crucial role of AI in revolutionizing pharmacy practice, urging pharmacists to adapt and lead AI integration to enhance healthcare delivery proactively.?

• Antimicrobial learning systems: an implementation blueprint for artificial intelligence to tackle antimicrobial resistance (January 2024, The Lancet)?The global public health challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) needs largescale optimization of antimicrobial use and wider infection care, which could be enabled by carefully constructed AI models.?

• Artificial Intelligence in the field of pharmacy practice: A literature review.?(Oct 2023, Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy)?The paper provides a comprehensive review of how AI is transforming pharmacy practice by enhancing medication management and optimizing patient care. It discusses the deployment of AI in detecting drug interactions, supporting clinical decision-making, and improving medication adherence, highlighting the significant potential of AI to influence future pharmacy operations and patient outcomes positively.?

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enables GPT-4.0 for clinical trial screenings?(June 2024- NEJM)?The study evaluates the RECTIFIER system, a GPT-4 based tool, for screening clinical trial participants with heart failure, showing higher accuracy and efficiency than traditional methods. RECTIFIER not only improved screening performance but also significantly reduced costs, emphasizing the need for clinician oversight when integrating such AI technologies.?

• Towards Conversational AI?(Jan 2024 – ARXIV)?A study on the development of AMIE, an AI system optimized for diagnostic dialogue. It discusses a study comparing AMIE's performance to primary care physicians in simulated medical dialogues, demonstrating AMIE's superior diagnostic accuracy and patient interaction. The study suggests AI's potential to enhance clinical consultations, emphasizing the need for further research in real-world settings.?

• Chatbot accuracy in answering medication related questions.?(April 2024 - JAPhA)?The research explores the efficacy of chatbots in providing accurate medical information. It focuses on a study evaluating chatbot responses against established medical databases, emphasizing that while chatbots generally provide correct information, there are still issues with completeness and accuracy that could impact patient care.?

Interesting Reads:?

• AI Terminology Primer?(July 22, 2024, The Verge)?A blog post by The Verge serves as an introductory guide to understanding artificial intelligence (AI), explaining key terms and concepts to demystify the subject. It aims to clarify the often-confusing jargon and advancements in AI technology, making it more accessible to readers unfamiliar with the field.?

• AI and Pharmacists Needs based on ASHP Summer Meeting Response?(July 17, 2024, Specialty Pharmacy Continuum)?A blog post by Marcus Banks discusses the transformative impact of AI on pharmacy practices and underscores the urgent need for pharmacists to engage actively with this technology. It emphasizes AI’s potential to enhance medication management and improve healthcare delivery, advocating for pharmacists to lead in the development and implementation of AI solutions to ensure they meet clinical needs effectively.?

• Digital Health Technologies need regulation and reimbursement that enable flexible interactions and groupings?(June 2024 - NPJ)?The article from NPJ Digital Medicine discusses the need for flexible regulatory and reimbursement frameworks for digital health technologies (DHTs). It highlights the challenges and opportunities of integrating various DHTs into comprehensive suites for specific clinical applications, stressing the importance of adaptable regulations to enhance healthcare delivery and patient management.?

• Advance Personal Personal Health and Wellness Insights with AI?(June 2024 – Google Research Blog) The blog details Google's development of the Personal Health Large Language Model (PH-LLM), which uses AI to analyze wearable data and generate personalized health recommendations. This model enhances health outcomes by providing tailored insights and advice based on individual physiological data.?

• Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacy Perspective by George Van Antwerp?(July 16, 2024, LinkedIn Post)?A post by George Van Antwerp discusses AI's role in optimizing processes across pharmacy sectors, focusing on high-volume tasks and complex areas like clinical decision-making and medical billing. It views AI as an enhancement, not a replacement, for human roles, aiming to improve both clinical outcomes and healthcare experiences.?

• AI-based second opinion services could improve clinical decision making?(May 2024 – STAT)?The article discusses the significant impact of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in healthcare, specifically in diagnosing complex medical conditions that had previously eluded multiple healthcare professionals. It underscores the potential for AI to enhance diagnostic accuracy, addressing human cognitive biases and reducing diagnostic errors, which could significantly improve patient outcomes.?

• Can Chat-GPT be trusted to provide medication information to patients??(June 2024 - Drug Topics)?The study by Cornelison et al., published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association in April 2024, found that while ChatGPT often provides accurate medication information, it sometimes lacks comprehensive counseling, particularly on drug interactions.?
• Is AI Overhyped in Healthcare? (July 31, 2024, Forbes) A commentary piece that reflects on where several experts in healthcare regard the status of AI on health advances. Overall, its still early.

AI Models & Tools Updates:?

• Upcoming Gemini Update with 1.5 Flash?(July 25, 2024, Google): Google’s Gemini platform has introduced the “1.5 Flash” feature to speed up responses and reduce errors, providing more accurate information. It now supports over 40 languages and is accessible in more than 230 countries, with expanded access for teenagers. Google emphasizes minimizing harmful or misleading content for a safer experience.??
• OpenAI opens waitlist for SearchGPT?(July 25, 204, OpenAI) OpenAI has introduced a prototype called SearchGPT, designed to enhance search capabilities using AI. This prototype aims to deliver fast and accurate answers with real-time information from the web, supported by clear and relevant sources. Users can sign up for the waitlist to try it out. Knowing where SearchGPT sources its information is a significant improvement. It enhances trust and credibility, as users can verify the origin of the data, addressing concerns about accuracy and transparency compared to previous models where sources weren’t always clear.?

Thank you for giving us a read! Feel free to drop a comment on articles you think are also worth sharing! We will aim to continue to do monthly updates on this topic!

Student Editors:

Yusef Yassin-Morales Thien Nguyen Krishna Panchal Chloe Flibbert