Pharmacy Technology Should Focus on Patient Engagement, Peer Insight | NCPA 2025

When it comes to properly utilizing emerging technology in pharmacy practice, community pharmacists should be focusing on a myriad of factors reliant on patients, pharmacy industry peers, and revenue.

According to Tara Pfund, PharmD, chief strategy officer with Cascadia Pharmacy Group, pharmacies can best utilize technology to improve patient engagement, learn from other pharmacy peers, and perfect revenue cycle management.

“I think making sure you get paid for the things you’re already doing, which is why we focus so much on technology for revenue cycle management, and having patients have a good experience, coming in and knowing the other things you do than just sell products, is the other biggest place to focus on,” Pfund told Drug Topics at the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) 2025 Annual Convention & Expo.

She gave a presentation at this year’s convention titled “Leveraging Technology to Optimize Pharmacy Workflows” and caught up with us after to provide further insights on the ways her and her teams are utilizing emerging pharmacy technology.

From new ways to automate workflows and give employees time back, to the outdated processes that are still being weeded out, Pfund shared with us the explosion of technology in pharmacy and the proper approaches businesses need to take in order to choose the right workflows. In part 1 of our interview with Pfund, she focused on the workflow bottlenecks in community pharmacy and how technology is coming in to help.

Read more of our coverage from NCPA 2025.

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