ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN CLINICAL PHARMACY

INTRODUCTION:

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the method of how we approach

and solve complicated challenges by being integrated into numerous sectors. Artificial

Intelligence has enormous potential to improve patient outcomes, expedite

procedures, and boost overall efficiency in the healthcare industry. The introduction of

Artificial Intelligence has a major impact on clinical pharmacy, which is an essential

part of the healthcare system. Artificial Intelligence has also an impact on the clinical

pharmacy from a variety of angles, which is including its application in the field, the

advantages it offers to the patients, to the chemists, and to the clinical pharmacy, as

well as its difficulties and potential future advances.

APPLICATION:

In clinical pharmacy, Artificial Intelligence has played an important role in the

management of medications. The data that chemists enter on their patients is saved in

the systems until they manually remove it. As a result, the clinical pharmacists can use

the Artificial Intelligence system to write prescriptions of drugs and offer more

specialized, personalized treatment plans based on the information about each patient

in a faster way, such as their health and medical history. In doing so, Artificial

Intelligence may analyze the patient's genetic information, medical history, and

lifestyle choices to suggest the best possible medication schedules and dosages. In a

shorter time, this can assist the patients in receiving a better and more efficient

treatment for their illness symptoms. By using AI algorithms and Machine Learning,

pharmacists can analyze a large volume of patient data, including medical records,

laboratory results, and medication profiles (Sri Harsha Chalasani, Jehath Syed &
Madhan Ramesh, 2023, para. 1).

Many new, more effective medications are being developed these days to treat

common and dangerous illnesses. As a result, artificial intelligence has been crucial in

the discovery and development of new drugs. By identifying promising drug

candidates through the analysis of large datasets, Artificial Intelligence speeds up this

process. By predicting the safety and efficacy of novel pharmaceuticals with high

precision in a short amount of time, machine learning algorithms help to reduce the

time and costs associated with lengthy laboratory testing. As a result, innovative

medicines are brought to market more quickly by this application.

Artificial Intelligence also played an important role in making informed

decisions by analyzing the patients’ data in real time by using the systems which have

collected the patient’s individual information. These systems have provided evidence-

based recommendations to help the pharmacists to identify the potential drug

interactions, allergies, and dosage adjustments. This is important because the potential

drug interactions sometimes may be benefit to the patient diseases to relieve the

symptoms, but sometimes the drug-drug interactions may be harmful and more toxic

to the patient. In a nutshell, by using Artificial Intelligence, the negative effects of

drug-drug interactions and the potential adverse drug effects may be avoided and thus

ensures a higher level of accuracy, ensure the safety of the usage of drug and reducing

the likelihood of medication errors. This is aiding them in identifying potential drug-

drug interactions, assessing the safety and efficacy of medicines, and making

informed recommendations (Sri Harsha Chalasani, Jehath Syed & Madhan Ramesh,

2023, para. 1).

 Artificial Intelligence is also used in predicting the disease progression and this

helps the pharmacists to make a treatment plan on relieving the disease symptoms.

Artificial intelligence can also be used to identify the patients at risk of certain

conditions, so that the pharmacists or physicians can have an immediate action to

solve it. Additionally, predictive analytics can be applied to the anticipated medication

adherence issues, and enabling proactive interventions, in order to improve the patient

compliance and prevent unwanted complications of the diseases.

Apart from that, Artificial intelligence is also used to build a Virtual Health

Assistants system, which is always in the form of chatbots. This system is very useful

and convenient to society as the system can provide healthcare-related information

and assistance to the individual according to the conditions that described by the

people. Patients sometimes have questions about their medications. By having this

system, patients can describe their questions on their medications, and the chatbots

can provide an accurate answer to the patients. This system is also designed to accept

every language of questions so that everyone from different countries can use it. AI

has revolutionized healthcare to be more effective and efficient and the pharmacy

sector is not left out (Muhammad Ahmer Raza, Shireen Aziz & Misbah Noreen, 2022,

para. 1)

Some Artificial Intelligence was also designed to improve the medication

adherence by sending reminders to the patients to take their medications on time. The

patients can set the reminding time according to the individual’s prescription schedule

from the pharmacists or physicians. By having such a function, the patients can get

the optimum effect of the medications and treat the disease in a shorter time.
ADVANTAGES:

Clinical pharmacists working within hospitals collaborate with healthcare

professionals to optimize medication use, manage complex treatment regimens, and

offer tailored care (Al, A. Z. 2023, introduction). AI in clinical pharmacy has

generated personalized treatment plans for the patients, by analyzing the patient data,

such as the medical history and the genetic information. This individualized treatment

plan can optimize the medication selection process, so that a suitable drug is selected

for the symptoms. Besides, the dosages also vary according to the condition of the

patients, and different medications need different dosage formulations. So, AI in

clinical pharmacy can help people to identify the most appropriate dosage

formulations and dosages for the particular medication to the patients so that they can

get the optimum outcomes.

AI in clinical pharmacy also enhances the diagnostics of the patients. AI

algorithms can analyze medical imaging and the diagnostics data. For example, the

patients have X-rays or radiography. X-rays are quick, painless tests that produce

images of the structures inside your body, especially bones (Speicher, A. 2019, para.

1). With the help of AI in clinical pharmacy, the images can be identified quickly and

accurately to find out the disease or symptoms of the patients. This results in timely

intervention and an improved prognosis for the patients.

By implementing AI in clinical pharmacy systems, it helps to save the cost in

different perspectives. AI has reduced the errors that may happen such as

inappropriate in selection of drug to the patient and causing adverse drug reactions in

the patients’ body. This can save the cost of drugs and helps the prescriber do not need

to facing negative consequence such as the patient was died due to the error selection
of drug, and causing the prescriber must pay for compensation to the patient’s family.

AI also quickly analyzes large amounts of data, providing insights that can help

pharmacists make informed decisions about patient care. This can lead to improved

patient outcomes, increased efficiency, and reduced healthcare costs (Osama Khan,

Mohd Parvez & Pratibha Kumari, 2023, page 32-40).

AI systems have a characteristic which is it can do continuously learning by

collecting the new data from the patients, from the pharmacists. AI systems are

updated and evolving medical knowledge so that it can solve the problems from

patients with many different questions. This adaptability of AI systems has ensured

that the technology always stays current and up to date so that it can always provide

the most relevant information and recommendations on the medications to the patients

to ensure the optimum patient’s outcomes.

DISADVANTAGES:

On the other hand, implementation of AI in the clinical pharmacy also brought

some address potential disadvantages associated with its use. First, it is about the data

privacy and security concerns. AI systems rely on a large volume of patient data to do

analysis and decision-making for the patient’s treatment plan. Therefore, the systems

collected a lot of data of individual patients, and every system has a risk of being

hacked by some people with ulterior motives. They may hack into the system and get

the information of patients and use it for some bad purposes. This condition is serious

as it could lead to the loss of patients’ confidentiality.

AI algorithms must be trained so that the data in the systems are unbiased and

maintain fairness. If some of the training data in the systems containing biases, the AI
systems may inadvertently perpetuate or amplify those biases, and thus causing the

disparities in treatment recommendations to the patients, and further causing the

unwanted outcome to them. This may lead to some severe effects to the patient and

affecting certain demographic groups disproportionately.

During the counselling between the clinical pharmacists and the patients, human

touch and empathy are important in this process. These two are important in order to

help the patient to persist in the treatment routine, because some treatment plans are

agony and difficult to continue. However, AI systems are excelling at processing data

and only providing objective insights, AI systems are lacking the human touch and

empathy which are important in the interactions process. So, AI is not replacing the

position of human in clinical pharmacy because AI systems are always lacking

emotional and psychological aspects in healthcare.

In addition, AI systems have brought a lot of convenience to the patients and the

healthcare professionals. In these days, healthcare professionals are over-relying on

the AI systems to solve the problems from the patients. This excessive reliance on AI

systems without a proper human oversight is leading to deskilling among the

healthcare professionals and this could diminish the critical thinking skills and the

ability to make independent, context-specific decisions by the professionals. If this

condition continues, it may lead to a lack of healthcare professionals that are good in a

particular field.

Furthermore, AI algorithms, especially the deep learning models, can be complex

and difficult to interpret. Sometimes, AI algorithms provide information which is

totally different from the decision made by the healthcare professionals. Besides, AI
algorithms are lacking transparency in certain decision-making processes, and this

may pose challenges for healthcare professionals and patients in understanding and

trusting the recommendations that are made by these systems.

CONCLUSION:

To sum up, the use of AI in clinical pharmacy is poised to revolutionize the

delivery of healthcare by improving patient outcomes, refining treatment regimens,

and streamlining pharmaceutical care. AI has several uses, including enhanced

diagnostics, decision support, and personalized drug management. These demonstrate

how revolutionary AI may be in changing the way clinical practice is now conducted.

As AI can exploit large databases to give medical professionals significant

insights into patient health profiles, its benefits in clinical pharmacy are clear. AI is

helping to move the paradigm towards precision medicine by providing more accurate

diagnoses and individualized and optimized treatment plans that are tailored to the

specific needs of each patient.

All and all, AI in clinical pharmacy offers the potential to create a healthcare

environment that is more patient-centered, efficient, and evidence-driven. We are

starting down a revolutionary route towards a future where pharmaceutical care is not

only optimized but also personalized to fit the various and distinct needs of everyone

by embracing the potential of AI while managing its challenges. AI has the power to

transform clinical pharmacy and forward the goal of providing safer, more efficient,

and patient-tailored healthcare solutions through cooperative efforts, ethical concerns,

and a dedication to continuous development.

REFERENCES:

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