We don’t want AI writing poetry, but it may free-up pharmacists’ time to care for patients, writes Fintan Moore
If you talk to anybody involved in an artistic or creative sector these days, the main topic of conversation is about the threat posed by AI to their area of interest. I mainly know writers, and every one I’ve spoken to thinks that the use of AI to write poetry, short stories or novels is making the landscape more difficult for the people writing their own work unaided by AI.
In my opinion, we’re a long way from AI being able to write a full novel, but there are definitely people who get it to write significant chunks of text. AI-generated visual art is similarly a problem for painters, photographers and graphic designers. Music is also vulnerable, although a cynic might say that so much modern music is already computer-assisted junk to the point that having a human is superfluous. The feeling of creatives across the board is that we don’t want the technology to do art – we want it to do the laundry, and the humans can do the art.
It’s stating the obvious that the artistic efforts of AI can be of mixed quality, and good quality art by humans will always be better, but its application to work processes is a different ballgame. There are a lot of jobs currently done by people which involve simple and routine data processing functions that could be automated.
Alongside the evolution of AI, we are also seeing a simultaneous rise in the abilities of robots to carry out manual tasks. Videos online show robots sorting products on assembly lines, stacking shelves, carrying bricks and even folding shirts. So, what tasks do we do in community pharmacy that could be replicated by machines? We already have dispensing robots, so what’s the end point?
Alongside the evolution of AI, we are also seeing a simultaneous rise in the abilities of robots to carry out manual tasks
At the moment, the system in my pharmacy is similar to that in many others. The rough process when a patient orders a prescription that has come in by Healthmail is that we print it off, scan it to their file, check for interactions or other issues, key in the items and doses etc, print the labels, assemble everything, check again, FMD scan, and bring to patient. Some other pharmacies have systems that will skip the print stage and save the prescription direct to file. Some pharmacies have dispensing robots.
None of this stuff is particularly high-tech, so we’re getting very close to a world where a single click will see the computer assign the Healthmail to the relevant patient, run the interaction check, process the items, print the labels and attach them to the products, do the FMD scan, and present them all in a basket or a bag for dispensing. All of this can be checked by the presumably-human pharmacist, but the efficiency possibilities are there.
Voice of the People
There is one aspect of pharmacy that some companies have already targeted for AI to replace people, and that’s the job of answering the phone. The theory is fine. Why should your staff have their valuable time taken up by dealing with calls from patients ordering prescriptions when a voice-recognition ‘bot’ can do the same thing and generate a list of what’s needed and for whom?
Pharmacists can make up their own mind about the merits of this, and I know some places will jump at it, but I won’t be one of them. I should probably follow Napoleon’s advice to ‘never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake’, but I’ll assume that the people attracted by this idea will ignore me or never read me.
In my view, relationships with patients matter, and how you deal with them on the phone is a good opportunity to build those relationships. You can show patience, empathy, humour, respect, helpfulness and professionalism in a brief call, and the phone ringing is an opportunity, not a problem. There are of course times when I’d like to leave it off the hook for a bit of peace and quiet, but a cup of tea usually fixes that.
Pharmacist or ‘Doc-lite’?
The role of the pharmacist in Ireland has expanded in recent years, notably with the introduction of EHC provision and vaccination services. The recent introduction of the Common Conditions Service (CCS) added a few more strings to the bow. Much as a lot of this is welcome, it’s creating a situation where a single pharmacist on duty is getting heavily stretched.
Vaccinations have the advantage that they can be scheduled for specific times so that a dedicated pharmacist is available, but most other services are walk-in and therefore the workload they create is completely unpredictable. As a result, there are times when the dispensary is fully occupying the attention of the pharmacist and there is no spare capacity to run a CCS consultation, so the simplest thing to do is advise them to contact a doctor.
In order to avoid this overload, an extra pharmacist would need to be always available, but the volume of CCS work doesn’t justify that level of staffing. If more services come onstream that may change, but we could also need a shift in mentality from dealing with everything ‘on the spot’, to having patients come at specific time periods when a pharmacist will be able to talk to them. Doctors run on clinic times or appointment times, so we must consider doing similar.
