Intelligent Pharmacy: Leveraging AI and Automation to Enhance Patient Care and Pharmacist Roles

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are transforming pharmacy practice, offering new opportunities to enhance clinical care, operational efficiency, and workforce optimization. Although nearly 50% of global health care organizations plan to integrate AI by 2025,¹ successful implementation requires clarity on stakeholder roles, benefits, and barriers. This article targets clinicians, pharmacy students, and health care administrators, providing an overview of technological advances, workforce implications, and educational needs in the evolving pharmacy landscape.

AI and Automation in Today’s Pharmacy Operations

reshaping hospital and retail pharmacy settings. Hospitals utilize automated dispensing cabinets, robotic intravenous compounding, radio frequency identification inventory systems, and AI-driven analytics for order verification.² Basic analytics, including use of data from smart pumps, clinical decision support, or automation in dispensing and compounding, have been deployed by 87.3% of hospitals.³ In addition, up to 73% of hospitals now use innovative verification tools for prescription processing,⁴ enabling remote oversight and low-risk auto-approvals while still routing high-alert medications for manual pharmacist review.⁵ Robotic compounding systems reduce waste, support supply chain resilience, and improve safety.

Retail chains are adopting similar innovations on a scale. CVS leverages centralized AI and robotics to serve more than 9000 stores,⁶ whereas Walgreens uses centralized robotic hubs that now fill 60% of prescriptions for approximately 3000 stores.⁷ Walmart’s facilities process up to 100,000 prescriptions daily, with plans to support 90% of its stores by 2026.⁸ This automation supports higher prescription volumes while decreasing dispensing errors and enabling faster turnaround.

Benefits for Clinicians and Health Systems

Key benefits of automation and AI include reduced medication errors, decreased wait times, and enhanced patient satisfaction, with a 15% to 22% improvement in pharmacy-related scores.^9,10 Pharmacist productivity increases by up to 33%, and central fill models reduce error rates to nearly 0% compared with manual methods.^10,11

The most transformative shift is in redeploying pharmacists to higher-value clinical roles. In automated environments, pharmacists report spending up to 45% more time on patient-facing care such as medication therapy management and chronic disease counseling.¹² Walmart’s automation led to a 30% increase in pharmacist-patient engagement by offloading routine tasks.⁸

For administrators, automation represents not only efficiency but also a retention strategy. In a time of widespread labor shortages, AI and automation reduce workload strain, minimize burnout, and attract pharmacists interested in advanced practice roles.

Challenges: A Balanced Perspective

Despite key advantages, automation and AI integration are not without challenges. Initial investment costs can be prohibitive for smaller institutions. Installation and maintenance of robotic systems, staff retraining, and integration with electronic health records require significant capital and time.¹³ Furthermore, change resistance among pharmacy teams and clinical partners may arise from perceived threats to job roles or discomfort with technology.¹⁴

Cybersecurity is another critical concern. As automation increasingly relies on cloud-based AI tools, safeguarding sensitive patient and prescription data must be prioritized.¹⁵ Health care organizations must also develop clear protocols for algorithm transparency, validation, and clinical oversight to prevent reliance on flawed or biased systems.^16,17

These realities highlight the importance of thoughtful planning, stakeholder engagement, and evidence-based implementation strategies.

Preparing Emerging Pharmacists for the AI Era

Pharmacy students and early-career professionals must be equipped to work in technology-driven environments. Curricula should incorporate training in digital literacy, data interpretation, and health informatics.¹⁸ Competency in working alongside automated systems, understanding AI outputs, and contributing to technology governance will be vital.¹⁹

Pharmacy schools should also foster interdisciplinary collaboration, teaching students to integrate AI tools into patient care teams and advocate for evidence-based deployment. Experiential rotations in automated or AI-enhanced settings can help students gain firsthand exposure to evolving workflows and clinical decision support tools.²⁰

Emerging pharmacists who understand both clinical and digital domains will be uniquely positioned to lead AI integration initiatives in practice settings.²¹

Future Directions: Strategic Integration and Ethical Oversight

AI applications are expected to become more advanced, assisting with drug interaction checks, clinical documentation, and patient education materials. Tools such as OpenEvidence support real-time literature analysis and care recommendations, assisting pharmacists in evidence-based practices.²²

However, AI tools are only as good as the data and logic underpinning them. Pharmacists must remain central to development and implementation, ensuring that clinical context, patient safety, and ethical considerations remain paramount. When used appropriately, AI can support, but never replace, the nuanced, human-centered care that pharmacists provide. Empathy, communication, and judgment remain irreplaceable.

Conclusion

AI and automation are redefining the pharmacy workflow, enabling clinicians to operate at the top of their license, improving system efficiency, and enhancing patient outcomes. Successful adoption, however, requires more than technology. It demands a balanced approach that acknowledges costs, barriers, and the need for ongoing training. By empowering pharmacists and students to engage proactively with these tools, the profession can lead this transformation and ensure that innovation translates into patient impact.

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