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Transforming Patient Care Through Pharmacy Technology with Dr. Ghalib Abbasi · Taking The Supply Chain Pulse

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hello again everybody.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: This is Fred Kranz from St Onge coming to you with another episode of Taking the Supply Chain Pulse.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Today we are going to be joined by Dr Ghalib Abbasi, the System Director of Pharmacy Informatics at Houston Methodist, and by our first co-host, sharon Wang, who is a colleague at St Onge and our resident pharmacy subject matter expert.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about some developments in pharmacy and in pharmacy informatics, so thank you both for being here.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Dr Abbasi welcome, happy to have you on our podcast Likewise.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Thankasi, welcome, happy to have you on our podcast Likewise.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you, fred.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Why don't you start off by giving us a little bit?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: about your background and up to your current role at Houston Methodist?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Certainly, yeah, thanks for having me here.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: My current role at Methodist is the system director of pharmacy informatics here and my role encompasses several service lines, including the pharmacy automated systems for dispensing medications and for anything related to software, hardware deployment of medication solutions system-wide.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Deployment of medication solutions system-wide.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I also do run the pharmacy informatics residency program at Houston Methodist and my background goes for, I would say, like maybe 24 years almost of experience.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: The majority of my career was spent in the hospital side over either overseeing or leading different strategies and initiatives in large healthcare systems.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: So that's me in a nutshell over here.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not quite you.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: In a nutshell, you have experience, interestingly enough, in both retail pharmacy background with CVS and also having worked at Baxter, which is very much in the news since Asheville got hit by Hurricane Helena, and you got your PharmD at the University of Iowa and I lived in Iowa for 17 years.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So just a little bit more that you haven't told us about, but we'll get in there.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: But the interesting thing, though, I think I wanted to point out is that with your manufacturer and your retail and your acute care healthcare background, you have three different points of view that are interesting, that many people don't have, and I think that is something that you bring to the discussion.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So just give us a little bit more detail, if you would, about what pharmacy informatics is and what it encompasses, if you would.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Certainly, Pharmacy informatics is the science of connecting the information technology with the clinical practice and basically the pharmacy informaticist is the liaison between technical teams and the clinical teams.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: It's that person who translates basically the IT jargon into clinical work, and vice versa, of course.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: So, basically any informatics discipline in this world looks at both the end user experience and the requirements.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: What would you do to meet, for example, your patient care needs?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And then how can you utilize technology to get to that point?
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And I think the informaticists in general are more inclined to be those, I would say, problem solvers.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: In this case, Clinicians would look at you as that person who would come up with solutions, the person who had the kind of like the magic wand, who I had to claim of course in this case, but unfortunately that's how people perceive you at some point, and you would need just to come up with innovative and you know, practical solutions that would work out.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: So that's like the operative piece of the informatics and then you would have, of course, the innovative piece.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Informatics doesn't stop with meeting the end user demands, but you need to be creative and to seek always solutions for problems that are showing the horizon.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So you know, for example, in the United States you'd have the trending now for the outpatient clinical care and clinical practice.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Question is what would pharmacy be in about 10 or 15 years?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: If we don't start thinking about this today and start planting those seeds, then it's going to be too late later on to get to a good practice and be just acquainted with what the healthcare continuum is going to look like in 10 or 15 years.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: So that's, in general, like what informatics, pharmacists, pharmacy and pharmacists do, and of course we can spend more time talking about more details, but that's, I would say, the general theme of what this encompasses.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to ask one more question and then turn it over to Sharon.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: What are you and?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: your team at Houston Methodist doing different in pushing the envelope with technology and pharmacy.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I think the difference here is that we not only adopt state-of-the-art technologies, we actually create them.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: The idea is that landscaping the market for existing solutions is something that I think anyone can do.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: You can go and shop, you can do and just do whatever like homework you want to do.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: But I think what we do at Methodist is that we actually take this a step further by looking at the needs that are upcoming in the industry over the next five or ten years or even further, and then what we do, we do innovate those solutions in-house.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: In here, we look further and we pilot things out and we study them and we find out whether this is worth a long-term investment or not.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's what distinguishes us from anyone else, which is the fact that we're always looking forward ahead of time and we not only look at the current landscape, but at the same time, we're looking looking at, you know, expanding our knowledge and share that with everyone else in the industry through that innovative approach we're adopting here.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: I mean that's just.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: I know that.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: You know, dr Abassi, I had come into contact with you at a previous ASHP conference and I think that some of the things that you were saying and that I mean when I was sitting in the audience, I was just like whoa, like I can't believe.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: The system is kind of I think you guys are just looking at perhaps, maybe common objects or maybe things that we take for granted in the non-healthcare world, and just really taking those items and just like applying it into health care, and I just thought that that was just very innovative and exemplary of your system to, you know, to integrate a lot of these technologies in Certainly, certainly, and yeah, we were always happy to share that info, like in the national and international conferences, because we believe that, you know, knowledge is power and if you know, if we can share the wealth, then I think we can expand that and maximize the patient care globally.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: If we can share the wealth, then I think we can expand that and maximize the patient care globally, if we can.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I mean that is the goal here.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: So I think in one of the previous conversations that we had, you had mentioned that you guys were using some application of smart glasses at Houston Methodist.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Can you tell me a bit more of maybe, like what you guys are doing with that or how it's used?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Sure and maybe, yeah absolutely yeah, the smart glasses is something we looked into a couple of years ago and we are still looking into use cases for it as well.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Those devices are basically for just the audience, who may not know what smart glasses are.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Those are basically pieces of equipment look like sunglasses, literally, and with like I would say, you know, transparent lenses, and then they're equipped with microphones, they're equipped with speakers, they're equipped with barcode scanners, they're equipped with cameras.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: They're equipped with cameras, and the reason why they call them smart glasses is that you connect that to a phone, whether wirelessly or tethered through a wire, and then what you would have?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: You would have also a projector on these smart glasses, typically over one of the eyes, somewhere, that basically projects to the user either an image or a video or a conference that they are attending.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: So an example of this would be if you use the smart glasses in surgery and you'd have a surgeon who's like, who'd like to take a second opinion on what they're doing, so the camera on the smart glasses would actually take a photo or a video of what that surgeon is working on, and then maybe some other surgeon thousands of miles away is looking at this and actually following and providing input and feedback to the operating surgeon and providing that feedback through the projector, basically, or through the audio.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So that's, in general, what the smart glasses are.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Now we look at the pharmacy here and what we can do in pharmacy with these.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: There are a bunch of use cases.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: The first time we used these were to use them in pharmacy education.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Basically, you would have a user taking the smart glasses, making a procedure, taking a video for the procedure and then basically that kind of gives the bird's eye view for the learner of how things actually look like.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So that's one use case.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: The other use case that we also attempted and we decided not to deploy it that much just because of the scale, but it was a good use case and we're going to be publishing about this very soon the use case is about unit inspections and basically what it does.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: We converted the unit inspections from mobile in the pilot to mobile and smart glasses.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Now you see, that's why I was talking about taking this a step further than other institutions, because many other institutions are still doing this either on paper or even using a desktop.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: We passed that stage a long time ago to the mobile devices, but now we we try to pass it again from the mobile devices to the smart glasses, and the way how this can work out is or the way we piloted is that, instead of going through a checklist of how you do unit and unit inspections, you know violations or things that you know, left somewhere that were not supposed to by end users, by by clinicians.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Instead of doing that on on a desktop or on a on a phone, you would just see the entire list over that projector, over the one of the eyes, basically on the smart glasses, and using voice, you can say yes, no, yes no to the questions being asked, and then, if you'd like to take a picture, you take a picture there too.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: You know, you can just ask.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: You know, just say take now, when you say take the smart list, snaps a photo for that, you know.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Just say take.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And when you say take the smog, just snaps a photo for that.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You know image or violation.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: That you see.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: The good news is that once you're done with this whole thing, you go back to your office and that report is waiting for you.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Basically you know as a PDF for whatever format you want, so kind and these kind of things and then you know we're looking at.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: You know we're looking at also some other use cases with this, such as, like you know, the inventory management, because it has that barcode scanner.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So that's like the next one in line we're looking at.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, I was going to say, you know, for unit inspections and just to give a quick background, I mean unit inspections.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: This is essentially a process that we do on the inpatient side a technician or a pharmacist, and they go to every single nursing unit and they have like a checklist, basically at the end of the month, and really what you're trying to catch is we're trying to catch to make sure that no expired medications are on the unit.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: It's a very you know, it's a very manual and laborious process.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: And I was just thinking, like when you were saying about, yeah, you can just take, snap a picture.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, like how often do pharmacy technicians or pharmacists, let's say, they go up to the unit, they check that crash cart and, you know, sometimes maybe you, you accidentally write 2025 instead of 2024.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: And it's just like on those stickers.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: It's like you, if you snap that image and you bring it down, it's like an automatic confirmation and there's no, there's no like question of like oh, what was it One, 2025, or was it seven, 2025?
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: You know that's.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: I mean that's great.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: And I think, like, I think that really goes to speak of this whole, you know, technology really enhancing and helping us do our jobs versus necessarily replacing our jobs, and I think that was one thing that I actually wanted to ask about as well.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: You were talking about using smart glasses for inventory management, and I know, with the new FTA guidelines coming up soon, where you have all the lot tracking and everything needs to be scanned and everything like that, do you think that these smart glasses will be very helpful in that application, I think, when those regulations roll out?
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I think actually, it will be very useful.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: And keep in mind the technology always, you know, relies on the products you're scanning.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: In this case, the problem that we're seeing today with the products is that there's not very consistent, I would say, when it comes to including all this information of our code.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Now, that doesn't mean we cannot use smart glass in this case, because you can still use it actually very effectively.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: The smart glasses actually utilize something called, when it comes to the inventory management, beside that laser scanning of the barcode, it uses something called OCR.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: This stands for the Optical Character Recognition, and what it does?
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: It uses the camera to look at like a kind of like a window or you know whatever that visual window is that the camera is focused on.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: It can actually read multiple barcodes at the same time, so you can actually look at, for example, at a shelf filled with medications you know, granted, though, the barcodes are expanded there and then then you can actually capture all these barcodes in one shot.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Now, if you're looking at individual products, assuming that these barcodes do include lot, expiration and the serial number, like what the FDA wants to see, then that smart glass can actually capture this whole image and it can actually point out to you which ones are expired or which ones are recalled or which ones are what that is the use case that I'd like to see coming up are recalled or which ones are what.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: That is the use case that I'd like to see coming up.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: But that depends also on the manufacturing companies putting that info in a barcode so we can read it.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: But that would be an optimal use case for any of this stuff, because then you just basically reduce labor by almost like 70 to 80 percent.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Um, the demand that actually is scanning one, one item at a time.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You know one, one visual field and you're just reading this whole thing through.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So I'd like to see this come into fruition at some point, for sure.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds so futuristic and high tech, but it just sounds like so within our grasp.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: And then yet also, you know we have to get these manufacturers to comply with our wants and wishes and so it's just like, oh, it's so close, it's so far away.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: And I have another question too.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about this application.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: So you know us, st Ange, being a supply chain company, we see a lot of advancements, obviously in supply chain and I know that the smart classes I think that there's been talks and even it may already be utilized Like so, for example, in companies like Amazon, when they're picking for, like the picking the orders you know to put in your box and sending it off to you, they're starting to use that smart class technology where I think you know, theoretically, you can see your list of things that you're supposed to be picking, you put it in the box and then you ship it off.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: A pharmacy you know is similar in that way, in the sense that you know we're also picking medications, let's say, to stock a cart and then we load the medications in the automatic dispensing cabinets on the patient floors and that type of thing.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Do you think that for smart glasses utilization in addition to your inventory management.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Do you see some of this?
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: I guess like picking function in the future as well.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the smart glass can actually guide you to what to pick and where to pick.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Um, in that sense, because, um, you know, one technology is one thing, but think about, like, maybe combining the smart glasses with something like geofencing, for example, which actually you know you need to pick up an item from an inventory, whether it's like a warehouse or like you're going in supply chain, and then basically the smart glass will tell you where to go and how to pick it.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: So basically it will tell you, you know, turn right, turn left, keep going forward.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: You know two feet on the right things like this, because then you're now combining this with something called geoplancing, meaning that the device itself understands the geolocation to where it's located in a given facility, and if you put that map in, then the device can literally just guide you to where to go and just grab it.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, this technology actually can be used to do multi functions in this way, because then it will actually guide you to go to look at maybe a very busy like shelf with maybe like very tiny small items that you can't like put like a robot in there, and that's, I think, where the where the value of this would be, it will be to to be placed in the, in the use cases where you need, like, manual procedures still because of the texture or because of the sensitivity or because of maybe, like we're talking about like, maybe flammable, maybe like you, you know items or stuff like that that you don't want to have just a robot just to poke into it or what have you, just regardless what use case we're talking about.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think there's like a lot of potential over there as well.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I believe when the smart glasses were first invented, the very first use case was a supply chain use case.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, that was the primary use case for these and that's where you like.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: When you go and just Google these up and you will see like maybe you know lots of advertisements you'll see that many of them actually do have that inventory management on a supply chain level, even before we talk about medications or pharmacy.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: When you were talking about the geofencing.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be great if we had smart glasses also on nurses and then you could geofence them and tell them your medication is in the refrigerator three steps down the hall, or for all of those missing medication issues right, I think that would be great, but keep in mind always that the technology is always as as good as as how we use it, you know.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: So, basically, you know it's, uh, you know, in my, in my opinion, the technology will never replace, like a human being, judgment and the clinical judgment, what have you?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: So it's always powerful to use technology in addition to what we do, uh, but I hope this will not replace, you know that.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: You know the way we think about things and the way how we just you, you know, you know judge, how you know what, what sounds right and what not.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I know that in another application that I think we had previously spoken about, I think before.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: This episode was about how Houston Methodist is using.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I understand that you guys are using Alexa's at your institution.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Could you maybe describe a bit more of you guys are using that and what it's coming into and really how it's helping your system?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Certainly we use the Alexas and they're called also the commercial name, which is the Echo Dot, the Amazon Echo Dot and there's also the Echo Show, which is like the video, the screen style.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: We started using them a couple of years ago and the very initial use case was for patient education that we used there.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: We got them as a matter of fact at the beginning for entertainment purposes for patients, meaning that you know, put that in a room patient want to have entertainment while they're there.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: You know, just maybe play like who wants to be a millionaire or play Jeopardy or whatever.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: It is right, I mean they enjoy it, I mean you know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: I mean you know it's like having a TV in your, in your like you know, patient room Just want to watch a movie or something that's similar like entertainment.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So and then we took it a step further.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: We thought, well, let's see how we can use this for patient education.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So we started by creating an algorithm internally at Methodist.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Basically, the algorithm asks the patients, or is started by the patient by asking the device, you know, open pharmacy, or connect me to pharmacy, our pharmacy in Houston, methodist, and then basically we have a database that we built for drug info and side effects and that info is shared with the patient on demand.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Now the use case there that if the patient, for example, wants to speak to a pharmacist, that option exists also with these.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: So the patient then would say you know, you know I'd like to speak to a pharmacist, or something like this.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: You know, within that algorithm and the farms would receive actually a message, actually using our electronic health record function, messaging functionality, and that message basically comes from a very specific room and the pharmacist would get the chance at that point to check the chart for the patient, know which medications that patient is on, understand the question.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Actually that came through because it says which medication the question is about, and call the patient back or even walk to the room and just discuss with the patient, knowing what the patient is on or the at least the patient medical background from that chart.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So that was a very powerful tool because you know that expands the patient education to the bedside big time in a way that may not be uh, you know, uh done before.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: It could have been like in the past that you know, if I have a question on a patient, I was going to call my maybe, like you know unit nurse and just request maybe someone to come in.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Well, like manual process.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Then someone needs to make a call to the pharmacy, see who's available and what have you.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Well, in this case the request is automated.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: It just goes to the pharmacy and then the pharmacy is going to, like this judge that workflow and a workflow, I'm sorry and then send someone who's available actually to answer the question at the time that the patient prefers.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: That's also something important.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So that's what the first use case.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And then we expanded that again to alert the pharmacist for the bleeding reversal agents announcements.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: So whenever, like, you're having a, an entered for, let's say, one of those bleeding reversal agents that are very timely and needs to be addressed right away, an announcement is voiced out in pharmacy using those devices.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: We've seen a reduction in the turnaround time because of this, because now you have a busy pharmacy around time.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Because of this, because now you have a busy pharmacy, you have a pharmacist, maybe at night, who is busy, maybe like preparing like some antibiotic treatment or something for a patient, and the order comes in, sometimes without a phone call.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes there's a phone call, sometimes there isn't if that pharmacist goes back to their desk and sees that order.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Well, that time has been basically like you know, lost, know lost because there was like no phone call, no communication.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: What have you to alert?
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Because maybe the clinician is busy too, you know as well.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: So now we are announcing that in pharmacy and now basically the pharmacy would know that if there's this very critical medication that needs to be attended to, and prioritization happens on the spot at that point, meaning that Maybe I'm doing something that may not be as important Maybe at that point, and then this comes in, so I would just Leave what I'm doing right now and just attend to this new priority and address it right away and this cuts down the turnaround time.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: We've noticed that it did cut down anywhere between 25% up to like 70% of turnaround time because of this and that's significant because I'm talking about very critical medications over there and you're just increasing that attentiveness basically to those therapies and maximizing the patient's safety in no time.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So, those are the two use cases we've used and we're looking at other use cases as well that we can talk about if you'd like but I mean, there are, like many others that we're looking at, that are clinical based and that are, you know, prone for success for sure.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Wow, I mean that's just great, because I mean, even you know, when you're a pharmacist let's say you're that overnight pharmacist and you're, let's say, sitting in that pharmacy, I mean, like you know, if you're relying on, let's say, the nurse to call you or someone to call you to say like hey, I just put a reversal agent order in, it's just like you know, you could potentially receive like two or three phone calls at exactly the same time and like one could be like L&D saying like hey, we ran out of, you know, narcotic or you know, another one says like, hey, we need you to do something.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, your most important one is like, hey, we put that reversal agent in and it's just like I feel like the Alexa or, you know, the Echo, I mean like the way that you guys are using it.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: It's almost like it's a very like objective priority.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Like you know, alarm, alarm, alarm.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: You have this.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: You know, like it's like, it's not like you have to wait until to pick up the phone to kind of figure out what's what's on the other line.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Correct, absolutely.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It's an added mechanism, for sure, to help prioritization for sure.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Like again, you know, we, we don't believe that, and that's true in general.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Technology does not replace the judgment of a clinician.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: It does not replace, like you know, the the, you know the intellectual power that people do have.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It's a, it's a, it's a help, it's a, it's a tool to assist in that.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: But it will not replace the judgment by any means, for sure, I guess one question I have about you know, the Echo and Alexa is, I guess, what has been the feedback of the staff who've been using it.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I think they were actually very pleased with the, with the device because, again, like you know, the the device and, by the way, we use it also for uh other like kind of like sane like use cases.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: I would say, for example, uh, we placed the uh echo dot in the iv room, okay, and then that became like your intercom, basically between the IV room and pharmacy, so things like this.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Basically you just reduce the bio-burden, of course, in the IV room because you don't touch those intercom anymore.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: So the staff were very happy because now you're making their job easier and anything that makes the job easier and workload-less is very welcome by staff, not to say that also those devices can be used again by the staff for entertainment if needed, maybe.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Like you want to play music, why not right If it's not?
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Like you know, if it's not deemed, like you know, any patient safety issues you know and you're having, for example, you know, just free time in the break room or whatever, just have it play music for you in the break room, why not Right, I mean?
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: So I think they appreciate it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: The staff appreciates, you know, having those helpers in the room because, again, like they're multipurpose and very easy to use.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Let me ask a question here when do you see pharmacy technology going in the future?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I think the pharmacy is now going to invest a lot in artificial intelligence.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Quite frankly, that is the next step that we're looking into because, um, you know, early in the uh 2000s, I think it was the communication kind of like revolution, basically with the internet, and you know all the use cases that came out with this.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: But I I think, if I may describe the 2020s, it is the era of the artificial intelligence right now and the rise of the artificial intelligence specifically in healthcare.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: So I believe this would be the next step coming up.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: We are going to be looking at engaging the healthcare industry with artificial intelligence moving forward, and I believe this will be an investment that is just unavoidable, and I believe what we can do is, you know, kind of like riding that wave as much as we can, because we already are seeing lots of use cases with artificial intelligence and pharmacy, and I think, whether it is like predicting your medication utilization, or whether it's dictating, like a conversation between a provider and the patient, or whether it's predicting an outcome for a patient that helps the clinician, dictating like a conversation between a provider and the patient, or whether it's predicting an outcome for a patient that helps the clinician, this is where we're going.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: This is where the pharmacy profession is going over the next couple of years, and we're going to be hearing a lot more about this, more forward as a matter of fact, even like later on this year in December, when we go to the ASHP mid-year in New Orleans.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot of discussion about this as well, in terms of use cases for artificial intelligence and potential, but we're still in the infancy over here.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: As a healthcare industry, and pharmacy in specific, we need to have more adoption and more forward thinking for sure, so at least we can be ready for that phase when it comes in.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the whole thing about AI is both the quantity and the quality of the data that's present, and I think, of all the disciplines that I've worked with in my career in the healthcare supply chain, pharmacy has always been the most reputable as far as having both quality and quantified data, and that's the way you do your business.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Are you confident that the information coming in is good enough to support these functions?
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately not, because the problem with the artificial intelligence today is the number one problem is data quality.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: That is the number one problem.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: And take, for example, if you have chat GPT, it relies on Google, right I mean?
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: So how much do we trust Google?
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean I can trust Google, maybe in a piece of news or maybe like a food recipe, maybe because you know, but when it comes to patient care and when it comes to referenced material and genuine and evidence medicine practice, then I cannot trust it like this, I cannot trust it like just by the face value.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: In order for me to trust artificial intelligence in healthcare, I need to control the input, meaning that what is the data that I'm allowing in actually?
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So at least I can control the output.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: If the quality is good, then the output is good.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: But right now I think the healthcare systems are struggling with those data points, even from what we may think as authentic sources.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: So I think the most successful initiatives today with artificial intelligence are the homegrown initiatives, because you are controlling your material yourself.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: You're not relying on someone else's material that you don't know the origin of or how it was controlled or what was the quality assurance around it.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So I think the more we have of data quality assurance, the more confident we're going to become in utilizing artificial intelligence.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: But I don't think we're there yet.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and ultimately, you are responsible for what you give the green light to.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: So you being pharmacists, I have great faith that when you give the green light, the green light will deserve to have been given.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Oh certainly Absolutely, and we don't want to lose that trust, of course, that's for sure.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: I mean the idea is that you know we're entrusted as providers.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: You know for the lives of our patients and you know we don't take that responsibility lightly.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I mean the idea is that this is what we are here for and I want to make sure like when I'm giving a treatment for the patient, that I'm 100% confident that it would help the patient to be to having a better outcome, Right Well we lost Sharon for a minute.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: She had a terrible internet connection and sometimes her internet froze for a moment.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: So, sharon, we got time for one more question.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Would you like to ask Dr Abbasi a question?
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think my last question is why do you I mean, I think you know, everything that you've spoken about thus far, I think already makes the case for this.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: But I think I guess, in summary, like, why do you think technology is so important in health care, I think, other than maybe some of you know, let's say, like just making our jobs easier and that type of stuff, I think in relation to how it affects patients.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I think technology is very important for patient care because that is the way how to maximize your patient care.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: You know we can.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: You know, as human beings we have limited capacity in terms of, like you know, let's say, time of the day or maybe, like you know, how much we can multitask.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Technology can expand those limits big time and I think that is maybe our job is to utilize those tools as much as we can, because the goal is to really like, maximize patient care.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: If we take the technology out of the context and rely only on judgment, then you're now talking about, you know, potential for errors.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Now you're talking about removing safeguards, relying on human judgment.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: That may be right but may not be right, you know, every once in a while.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: So, basically, technology is important because it is your safety net for your judgment.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: You do your judgment, but then let's say, you know you miss something.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Then technology would come there and perform as a safety net for you.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Without technology, I don't think you can maximize patient care and patient safety.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: You'll need technology, for sure.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Do you also I was going to say do you also feel that technology, let's say, gives hospital systems competitive edges over one another?
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: So, for example, like, let's say, houston Methodist, you guys have extremely advanced technology.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Do you feel that that sets you up and puts you in a better place for patient care, let's say, compared to, maybe, a hospital system that doesn't have such advancements?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: I think you know, from a marketing standpoint, that actually may be like the case, but let me tell you what difference, what difference we do also here.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I think implementing technology is one thing, but implementing meaningful technology is another thing.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't matter if you look at the end of the day, if you just, you know, put like millions or billions of dollars in technologies, if you, if there's no use case for it or it doesn't solve a problem.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I think the, I think the, the difference that institutions would see or the patients would see in institutions is that, yes, you have the state of the art technologies, but you also know how to use them and where to use them.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: I think that that's what sets people apart, because you can go, like you know, anywhere around the world and you can see, like people investing a lot of monies in technologies but they don't have the safest systems after all.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, the idea is that you really need to to have the use case and and the problem to solve.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, I think, in general these days, uh, patients do look at these, uh, when they compare, because healthcare also the market, you know, you have options to go to.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: I mean you can, you can go whatever you you want to be on a shop, basically, and you know, as a patient, I'd options to go to.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I mean you can go wherever you want to shop, basically, and you know, as a patient, I'd like to go, you know, to the institution that actually can grant me the best patient safety profile.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: And usually the hospitals with advanced technologies are statistically more likely to offer that advantage compared to the hospitals that do not have that kind of technology.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Just statistically.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We're right at the end of our time, doctor, and I have one traditional question that I ask as a final question Is there anything that you'd like to talk about that we forgot to ask?
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: The last thing I want to talk about is I'd like to encourage people to keep an eye open for use cases for advancement of pharmacy practice, and I would say the best way is your grassroots.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Fetch those use cases because those will be the most successful usually, because if you do that then you're solving a problem rather than creating a solution for the problem that does not exist, because that is usually not very helpful.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: So seek those advices from your test route and go after solutions.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Very good, Sharon.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Do you have a final question?
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: No, I don't have any questions.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, dr Abassi, this has been so enlightening, as usual, and I just I love to you know, hear about just everything that you guys are doing, and and I just liked the way that you're going about it, you're very practical.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: It seems like it's a very practical way about implementing some of this technology and just trying to solve solutions that exist, as opposed to chasing imaginary ones.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: So it's great always talking to you.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Sure, my pleasure.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was great talking to chasing imaginary ones.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So it's great always talking to you.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Sure, my pleasure.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great talking to you as well.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Well, dr Abbasi, I agree with Sharon, and I also have to thank Sharon for making this a meaningful conversation, because about 80% of what was talked about in this episode I know nothing about.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So we owe it all to the two of you.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here and hope to talk to you both again soon, thank you.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, take care.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks, dr Vasi.