Q&A: The New Technology Helping Pharmacies Facilitate Drug Shortages

According to many pharmacists and pharmacy operators in the US, drug shortages are one of the most pressing issues facing pharmacies today. With record levels of shortages persisting, and a fear of increased shortages due to tariffs, pharmacists are looking for new ways to ensure their inventory can serve the patients in their communities.

“My history is working in innovation in various types of pharmacy solutions,” said David Swenson, RPh. “So, we thought, we need to help pharmacies. We need to figure out a way that we can get the information they need in front of them. [We] figured out how to extract information from the publicly available websites, like the FDA, and put it into a form that was useful for pharmacists.”

Swenson is the founder and CEO of ShortStop Rx, a pharmacy solutions company that recently partnered with Cold Chain Technologies (CCT) to introduce CCT Rx Shortage Solutions. Swenson has been working to get the word out about this new technology and how it’s keeping pharmacists on top of US drug shortages in real time.

CCT Rx Shortage Solutions is a technology designed to help pharmacists identify drug shortages in real time. | image credit: Anna Baranova / stock.adobe.com

We caught up with Swenson to learn more about the new technology and the market-wide challenges that have spurred a need for it.

READ MORE: Drug Shortages, Affordability Remain Top Concerns in Managed Care Pharmacy

Drug Topics: Whether it be patients, the duties of pharmacists, or public health as a whole, how have drug shortages impacted health care?

David Swenson: Let me give you some background information on this. In the year 2024, which is the last year we have complete data from, the research we did is we put together this product. We found that at one point there were 323 shortages in the US happening simultaneously. Think about that. A typical pharmacy that we would go into has about 2000 maybe 2500 drugs stocked in that pharmacy. So, think about it, this is a large percentage of the total number of drugs stocked in this pharmacy that are in short supply.

If you look it up on ChatGPT or one of the AI sources, they'll tell you that there are about 88,000 retail pharmacies in the US. Virtually 100%, based on the research we did, experience drug shortages almost on a daily basis. And here's another interesting fact, 76% of these retail pharmacies were experiencing more than 3 per day. Here you can kind of get an idea of the gravity of this problem. I'll add one last thing to this, which is really concerning right now: tariffs. As this whole tariff situation comes into focus, the pharmaceutical industry has been named in a number of the articles about this, which is making people very nervous that the shortage problem could actually get worse.

Drug Topics: What is CCT Rx Shortage Solutions and what created a need for this technology?

David Swenson: I’ll just tell you a little story, because that's really what evolved into the formation of this company. I'm retired now and working as a consultant. I got hired by a company in India who had a service they wanted to provide to pharmacies in the United States. They hired me and asked me to do some research for them to see if the service that they provide would work here in the US. As a part of being hired to do this, my job was to contact and talk with about 55 or so pharmacies from around the country—chain pharmacies, independent practitioners, hospitals, and so forth—a real broad category of pharmacies. And I did that. What I found was, first of all, the product they were interested in offering to pharmacies probably wouldn't work at all. We found that out.

But as I talked with these folks, I asked all of them, what's the biggest problem they faced every day? And hands down, virtually everybody I talked to said drug shortages were the biggest problem by far. And some went so far as to say—I talked to one large, big-box retailer that has a pharmacy embedded in it—[they] said that they had an extra staff member working each day on drug shortage problems. It became clear that this was not only a big problem but was an unsolved big problem. My history is working in innovation in various types of pharmacy solutions. So, we thought, we need to help pharmacies. We need to figure out a way that we can get the information they need in front of them. And so that's what a good friend and I worked together and figured out how to extract information from the publicly available websites, like the FDA, and put it into a form that was useful for pharmacists. And that's what we did.

Stay tuned for more from our conversation with Swenson, as he dives deeper into CCT Rx Shortage Solutions and the challenges it’s helping pharmacists overcome.

READ MORE: Prescription Drugs in the US Must Be Viewed as Critical Infrastructure | ASPL 2024

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