Q&A: AI, Collaboration Are Key in Addressing Drug Shortages

While drug shortages continue to plague pharmacy operations and patient access to medications, new tools and collaborations are making similar issues become challenges of the past. Despite drug shortages becoming seemingly inevitable in today’s pharmaceutical landscape, tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and basic but pertinent collaboration are proactively working to address drug shortages.

“At the local level, technology continues to evolve. It's easier to access, obtain, and implement,” Lani Bertrand, senior director of clinical marketing & thought leadership at Omnicell, told Drug Topics. “It doesn't mean that it's only going to be your largest health systems that have the luxury of doing it; it can be at the community level.”

In part 2 of our interview with Bertrand, she breaks down how AI and automation are being deployed across the supply chain—from federal regulatory agencies down to community pharmacies—to better predict, track, and ultimately prevent the shortages that disrupt patient care.

Bertrand highlights that the FDA is already leaning into AI-driven analytics and predictive forecasting tools to gain a clearer picture of the national drug supply. Looking ahead, she sees an opportunity for deeper collaboration between the FDA and agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to tackle the quality issues that sit at the root of many shortages. Importantly, she notes that AI-powered inventory tools are becoming accessible enough for smaller, community-level pharmacies—not just large health systems with deep resources as previously mentioned.

READ MORE: Drug Shortages Persist Due to Cost, Complexity, and Fragile Supply

Drug Topics: Out of all the ways automation and AI technology have broken through in pharmacy practice, what approaches have you seen best be utilized to address drug shortage concerns?

Lani Bertrand: Well, we can take it at the top and actually start with some of the activities that we're seeing within the FDA. They are utilizing analytics and tools that would be driven by AI technology to help them do better analysis of our overall drug supply chain. [They’re also doing] that forecasting and predictive analytics to help mitigate these shortages.

Drug Topics: What more can be done in the future regarding drug shortages and how do you see the approaches we discussed today being standardized across the US pharmacy industry?

Lani Bertrand: Well, again, I'll go back to starting at the top. [There’s] not only the activity within the FDA to help, but collaboration. We could see HHS collaborating more so with the FDA and related agencies to help address the overall topic of drug shortages.

Quality issues are oftentimes the source of drug shortages, and sometimes they are the hardest to resolve. [Organizations are] looking at ways to invest in technology and AI to have more robust quality measures within manufacturers as the source of many of these shortages.

At the local level, technology continues to evolve. It's easier to access, obtain, and implement. It doesn't mean that it's only going to be your largest health systems that have the luxury of doing it; it can be at the community level. Again, just using technology like radio-frequency identification (RFID) AI, there are ways to track inventory that doesn't necessarily require large robotic systems that wouldn't necessarily be applicable in those smaller settings.

Drug Topics: Has the adoption of AI and automation in pharmacy practice been gradual, rapid, or is there a turning point in the industry that pharmacists have yet to take advantage of in this space?

Lani Bertrand: It may not be directly correlated to drug shortages, but in terms of AI, the adoption or implementation is grabbing hold more so in those administrative-type tasks, [like] revenue cycle documentation. That's occurring perhaps more so in the medical care setting. But if we look at pharmacy, there are ways to use it. But pharmacists by nature are going to be conservative and very cautious with how we use that tool, as you might appreciate.

But there are applications in terms of lessening the burden on pharmacists and pharmacy staff for order verification, which can help enhance and expedite patient care. It can help us look at our drug inventory faster. Again, I'll go back to predictive analytics and forecasting, I think those are the most important things in the near term that would address how we can reduce the burden of drug shortages.

READ MORE: The Pharmacist-Developed Tool Helping Mitigate Drug Shortages

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