How Community Pharmacies Can Proactively Identify Drug Shortages
David Swenson, RPh, discussed drug shortage technology that his company is helping bring to community pharmacies across the country.
In the independent community pharmacy space, the struggle to keep businesses open and finances stable has been recognized by several entities within health care. On top of declining reimbursements and many other pharmacy challenges, drug shortages are yet another industry-wide pressure that’s making pharmacy sustainability increasingly difficult.
“If we can give pharmacists a tool that not only helps them to, number one, identify drug shortages way up the supply chain, before those shortages make their way down into the pharmacy, that really is helpful, so they can anticipate,” said David Swenson, RPh, founder and CEO of ShortStop Rx. “And the second thing that we’re hopeful this tool can do is that it can also give [pharmacies] the ability to identify substitutes. If it's not available from one manufacturer, maybe they can get it from another.”
Through his work at ShortStop Rx—who recently partnered with Cold Chain Technologies (CCT) to create CCT Rx Shortage Solutions—Swenson has explored the pharmacy industry and identified some of its biggest challenges. According to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, as of March 2025, there were 270 ongoing drug shortages.1 When some pharmacy storefronts only carry up to 2000–2500 drugs in their inventories, these drug shortages can account for a large majority of a pharmacy’s prescriptions.
Swenson recently sat down with Drug Topics to discuss how the CCT Rx Shortage Solutions technology works and how it’s helping pharmacies navigate one of the most pressing issues in both pharmacy and health care as a whole.
READ MORE: Q&A: The New Technology Helping Pharmacies Facilitate Drug Shortages
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