Telepharmacy : Assessing Readiness of Community Pharmacies in the Philippines / Nansie Kristel C. Escarnuela

Date : May 2019
Number of Pages : 48 leaves
Adviser : Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon

Abstract

Telepharmacy, which is a subset of telemedicine, makes it possible for pharmacist to provide supervision even without the physical presence. This would require additional technology for it to be implemented. This project address the assessment on the readiness of community pharmacies towards implementation of telepharmacy. A combination of interview with subject matter experts, survey among drugstores, and desktop review were employed as data collection method. Framework consist of infrastructure and support services, human resources, operations, cost and government policies and regulations. Two interviewees agreed to share insights while 25 respondents from both chain and independent drugstores agreed to participate in the survey. The minimum pre-requisite technology should be capable of distant communication and secured transmission, storage and retrieval of patient information. While all of the drugstores have at least one ICT device, with telephone as the most common device, ICT tools that fulfill the minimum pre-requisite technology are more widely used by chain drugstores than independent. Regarding the human resources, pharmacy assistants handle the drugstore operations throughout the entire operating hours therefore they have to perform the function of the pharmacist. When there are uncertainties, pharmacy assistants have to contact the pharmacists either via phone or chat. In the latter means of communication, photos of prescription has to be transmitted via Facebook messenger. Though this scenario has an issue on compliance to both Philippine Pharmacy Act and Data Privacy Act, this can be viewed as opportunity to drive the implementation of telepharmacy and standardization of practice. Competencies of pharmacy workforce can be developed through the continuous trainings. Barriers to implementation include cost and lack of implementation guideline that will standardize the telepharmacy practice. It is recommended to progress the IRR for telepharmacy and subsequent alignment of community pharmacies to the IRR.