Introduction :

Over the past forty years, information technology has had a significant
impact on the working lives of millions of people. Many medical fields
have adopted information technology because of the benefits of
automated information processing. Over time, health information
technologies are becoming increasingly important in all aspects of health
care. As a result, pharmacy has become a highly technology-dependent
profession, and pharmacist jobs in the field of information technology are
becoming increasingly important, especially in the advanced health
systems of developed countries.
The primary roles of IT in Pharmacy :
According to the American Pharmacists Association, the basic roles of
information technology in this field can be summarized under five
specific categories :
 Information management
 Knowledge delivery
 Data analytics
 Clinical informatics
 Change management
1- Information management :
In their key role of overseeing medication-related information
available within health IT tools, pharmacy informaticists must
generate and share this information with various healthcare
professionals to ensure patient safety while also measuring the usage
and effectiveness of this information throughout the clinical process.
2- Knowledge delivery :
In a health IT environment, pharmacy informaticists drive the delivery
of medication-related information and knowledge throughout the
clinical knowledge lifecycle, clinical decision support provides
clinicians and patients with knowledge and person-specific
information intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times to
enhance health and healthcare., clinical decision support makes use of
many tools to assist with the delivery of evidence-based care, EHR
optimization is another project that may include a pharmacy
 informatics professional during planning, design and/or
implementation, a best practice of EHR users, EHR optimization is the
concept of using the EHR to its fullest capacity in the most efficient
way possible.
3- Data Analytics :
Healthcare analytics is the application of statistical, reporting and
presentation tools and techniques to healthcare-related data in order to
study past situations to improve the quality and efficiency of clinical
and business processes and performance. Analytics may be applied to
a week’s worth of data from a unit in a hospital or a health system’s
performance measures over many years. The pharmacist informatics'
expertise in drug information is crucial to accurate querying and
reporting of health data.
4- Clinical Informatics :
Clinical Informatics, also called health Informatics, promotes the
understanding, integration and application of information technology
in healthcare settings.
Computerized medication reconciliation, also known as med rec, is the
process of comparing a patient’s medication orders to all medications
the patient takes via the EHR. Research has shown that almost half of
medication errors occur in the handoff phase with many of these errors
being avoidable through proper medication reconciliation.
5- Change Management :
When dealing with knowledge to guide healthcare delivery, the only
constant is change. Treatments come and go, diagnostic tools evolve,
clinical practice changes; healthcare regulations, best practices and
laws shift all these things change and all impact your clinical decision
support initiatives, because successful clinical decision support
requires attention to the five rights mentioned earlier, clinical decision
support interventions must be actively managed. To effectively
manage the process of selecting, applying and maintaining these
clinical decision support assets, a governance structure and process
must be assembled. A team of clinical informaticists, including the
pharmacy informaticist, can help accelerate the change management
process.