Thank you to the Membership Committee, especially Melody Hu, for organizing our guest speakers who together made up a panel to discuss the use of technology in various aspects of healthcare, both currently and looking to the future. Thank you also to Emel Islanzada, PhD Candidate at UBC Centre of Blood Research, for moderating.
Mark Zhou, Director of Pharmacy Operations at Easy Drugs, gave a perspective from the eyes of a pharmacist. How drugs are dispensed. The field still uses fax machines to receive prescriptions from physicians, and this is the only way other than paper provided in-person, that they are allowed under their governing body to accept and fill requests.
In his role he has learned just how dismal the flow of data is within the healthcare industry. The data is kept in silos with a tremendous amount of resources being spent trying to make the data secure and shareable but they have such a long way to go.
Just like the compensation system the physicians work with; the pharmacists are limited as well. The pharmacies are paid per filled prescription versus the care and attention they give, and want to give, to clients. Thus leading to a quick in, quick out approach and a lot of time spent doing technical work that, frankly, a pharmacy tech could do or even better an automated system could do.
The college of pharmacists need to work to catch up and keep up with changing times.
Rob McIntyre, Chief Financial Officer at Dispension Industries Inc., spoke about the work they are doing in bringing secure technologies to the service of drug dispensing. They have vending machines so to speak, that use biometric technology for safe, secure and convenient access to controlled substances.
The opioid poisoning crisis continues – right now there are about 20 people a day are dying in Canada, hospitalizations sit at about 17 a day, there are about 130 EMS responses each and every day. In the US more people die of overdoses than gun violence and car accidents combined. 20% of opioid deaths are in the construction industry; 3-4 are male aged 20-45 with indigenous people disproportionately affected.
This translates to huge costs, not just in lives but in monetary costs to our healthcare system. A lot of this avoidable, through good communication with pharmacists, care givers, and finding a way to provide safe products to the populations most at risk.
For unique identification they use technology that reads the vein pattern on the hand, this being one of the most unique identifiers. The client registers with their primary care giver/physician then they are able to use the drug dispensing machines for safe access.
Dispension Industries recently used a test machine at the Dodgers stadium with a bank of beer dispensing machines using facial scans as the security measure. The next iteration is a contactless intoxication test that can assess the level of alcohol in the system.
Wayne Fraser, VP Partner Services at CuePath told the story of the company’s founder who had an experience with family member not taking medications properly. In some cases this can result in very serious repercussions. From his family experience he developed their purpose: CuePath is all about ensuring medication adherence and finding the easiest way for people to stay on the correct schedule using technologies.
CuePath has developed proprietary bubble packs for medication whereby when each bubble is opened CuePath records the date and time. CuePath is the 1st company to gather this exact data – when people are actually taking their medications. The result is that patterns can be determined, healthcare providers will be alerted, and they can then help their patients with any issues that arise, e.g., morning schedules are tough so perhaps getting a care aid in at the critical time to help with tasks would resolve the issue.
This is groundbreaking as up until now there has been no useful data collected – no way to collect it. The only data they have had is prescription renewal schedules which is unreliable in terms of when the medication is actually taken.
The presentation and subsequent questions provided a very interesting meeting highlighting the need for modernization of pharmacies and dispensation of drugs using technologies to benefit the outcomes for all people.
