NEW YORK — Just when the pharmacy sector was adjusting to the transformative power of generative AI, agentic AI technology is poised to eclipse its ancestor.
Conventional artificial intelligence has already offered drug stores potential solutions to significant challenges facing the industry, such as:
• Staffing shortages and professional burnout.
• Financial pressures and store closures.
• Competition from online and mail-order pharmacies.
• Supply chain costs and disruptions.
AI-powered pharmacy management systems provide predictive analytics for supply and demand, prescription verification automation, patient history analysis, pricing optimization, and staffing demand forecasts. Whereas gen AI is reactive and requires human supervision, agentic AI is proactive and makes autonomous decisions based on data-fed algorithms without human involvement.
“Independent thinking is what separates agentic AI from conventional AI,” said Anshu Raj, director of operations at Chetu, a global software solutions and support services provider, who oversees AI projects. “These autonomous AI systems plan, execute and adapt, based on the latest data.
“While AI assists pharmacists with data and automation, it still requires human oversight,” Raj added. “AI agents analyze situations, set goals and make decisions with minimal human involvement. It will transform pharmacy efficiency and optimization with next-gen self-adaptive AI solutions.”
Agentic AI addresses pain points
• Prescription processing, inventory management — Deepak Borole, a project manager at Chetu specializing in health care projects, said agentic AI has the potential to transform prescription processing and inventory management, which are often manually entered and can lead to data and inventory errors.
“By using AI agents to verify prescription verification, the drug store will elevate its automated inventory platform based on real-time data, which will preemptively alert pharmacists of potential drug shortages,” Borole said.
Drug stores and pharmacies are among the industries that are gradually embracing this disruptive technology, which can enhance patient care.
“To minimize errors during hospital discharges or care transitions, agentic AI can gather patient medication information from various sources (such as pharmacies and EHRs) and reconcile it, reducing potential mistakes,” Borole said.
Agentic AI will also automatically check for drug interactions across several databases, limiting the possibility of human error and warning the patient and pharmacist of any possible issues.
• Patient adherence, personalized care — The agentic system anticipates the patient’s prescription refill needs based on their medication history and automatically initiates the refill process, including contacting the doctor for authorization, without human intervention.
“With agentic AI, pharmacists can move from pushing pills to providing one-on-one care for their patients,” Borole added.
• Regulatory compliance — Many industries, including the pharmacy sector, must comply with complex regulatory requirements and time-consuming documentation.
Borole said agentic AI automates compliance checks for regulations like HIPAA, generates reports and streamlines record keeping.
• Implementation challenges — Large and small chain drug stores have to deal with similar implementation challenges when deciding to adopt AI and agentic AI systems, such as data security, privacy, data quality, integration with existing systems, regulatory guidelines and staff training.
“Companies should set up cross-functional teams that include a diverse group of team members from the pharmacy, operations, finance and customer-facing staff,” Raj said. “Cross-functioning teams are important because they help ensure the system is set up to deal with all concerns, rather than just one viewpoint.
“I recommend starting with a pilot program or gradual rollout to determine any issues that need to be addressed,” he added.
• Implementation options — Raj said companies could buy third-party vendor products, which often have lower upfront costs and faster rollouts, or hire a vetted software solutions provider to develop a custom proprietary system built to meet their specific business requirements if they don’t have a qualified IT staff.
“There is also a hybrid approach that brings onboard industry-specific software developers to customize the vendor products,” Raj added. “This method enables faster implementation, while still allowing for a customized solution.”
Regardless of the approach, an AI system can help achieve greater profitability by utilizing AI for competitive pricing, addressing staffing shortages and enabling pharmacies to provide better care for their patients.
Implementing an agentic AI pharmacy management software platform today should give chain drug stores more tools to compete in an ever-changing retail industry. Agentic AI complements a growing business landscape because each agent makes its decisions independently, which enables it to be highly scalable.
The future of agentic AI and enhanced medication outcomes
Borole said agentic AI has greater predictive medication optimization capabilities because it can analyze in real time patient data to predict individual responses to medications. This enables doctors and pharmacists to personalize dosage and drug selection, which could significantly improve medication efficacy and reduce adverse reactions.
Agentic AI-powered health care wearable devices and remote monitoring systems can autonomously track patient medication adherence, vital signs and drug responses in real time. If an anomaly is detected, the AI agents trigger automated interventions, including adjusting dosages or sending timely alerts to pharmacists and physicians. AI agents can also decipher the findings of genetic test results and suggest the most effective drugs based on each patient’s unique genetic profile.
Borole said a key advantage to agentic AI is that it works 24/7, monitoring the patient’s health, which allows it to make real-time decisions on medication plans.
Powering these real-time decisions is agentic AI’s ability to continuously learn from patient data and outcomes.
“Their algorithms are continuously improved and refined to optimize medication therapy over time,” Borole added. “Patients will experience more individualized and effective medication outcomes as a result of this continuous improvement loop.”
Agentic AI is the future of artificial intelligence, but it carries many of the same cautionary risks as AI. Chain drug stores must prioritize concerns, such as data security, privacy, integration of legacy systems, continuous maintenance, updates and the quality of data on which these systems rely. An AI or agentic AI system is only as good as the data that is used to train the algorithms.
“With high-quality data, agentic AI has the potential to provide greater efficiency and optimization in pharmacies,” Borole said. “However, drug store chains must also strike a balance between relying on technology and prioritizing patient health care
For more information, visit Chetu.com.
