Importance, risks and uses of computer technology in pharmacy

Using technology in pharmacy is very useful for the pharmaceutical profession, It improves the pharmacists’ work, and it gives them more time to help the customers, Using computers reduces the time, expenditure, and manpower required for any kind of work, The research will be long-lasting and expensive without using the computers.

Importance of computers in pharmacy

Using computers is useful for patient profile monitoring, drug interactions, medication, database management, material management, drug information services, patient counseling, billing & purchasing.

The bar codes on the bottles and the containers allow the pharmacies to record the drugs and the compounds that they have on hand and their quantities of them, they help to confirm that the right product has been delivered, stored, retrieved, and dispensed to the customers.

The pharmaceutical companies developed the drug information database system to manage various information generated during the development of new products and after the launch of the products, So, they provide safe and quality drugs to medical professionals and finally to patients.

The computers can help run business operations efficiently, They make it easier to handle routine business tasks such as recording, tracking, and paying vendor bills, The computers can improve patient safety, they help to provide high-quality care, and help patients make the most of their medicines as they provide the tools for monitoring the efficacy and safety of medicines in use.

The computer is very useful for the pharmaceutical industry, as it is very useful for drug design, crude drug identification, drug information, storage and retrieval, bulk drugs, and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The computers are useful for the hospital and clinical pharmacy, pharmaceutical analysis, and diagnosis and data analysis, they can store patient records, and they facilitate electronic prescribing. The computers provide the prices for the medications as possible substitutes automatically update the prices and scan prices from the bar codes.

The computers are useful for locating the items by various means (the brand name, the product code, the category, the generic name, the supplier, etc), and they give updates on prices and other product information.

Computers are used for the design of drugs (CADD), CADD is referred to as a distinct and advanced drug designing process, It is a process of pronouncement of new medications, Drug Bank Data Base offers a complete and detailed description of a drug (pharmacological and pharmaceutical action) and also involves bioinformatics and chem-information.

Computers record various drug data, Computers are useful for getting the complete drug information which is used to satisfy the queries by patients about toxicology, adverse drug reactions, and drug-drug and drug-food interactions.

Computers are related to every corner of the pharmacy field, They are used in the drug design technique, retail pharmacy shops, clinical research centers, crude drug identification, drug storage, and business management.

Computers are used for various functions, Some accounting functions such as preparation of prescription labels, providing receipts for patients, generation of hard copy records of transactions, calculating total prescription costs, automatically ordering low quantity products via electronic transitions, and preparation of annual holding payrolls.

Computers can be used in hospital pharmacies for receiving and allotment of drugs and professional supplies, patient monitoring and information on patient records, and storing the details of every individual. Clinical trials are an essential part of drug development, which evaluates the pharmacological benefits, Computers can ensure the safety of drug development.

Hospital administration computers help in the storage of data and recovery of data (retrieval), Many information managing technologies are implemented in their operations by pharmaceutical companies to intensify the efficiency in their production runs, With the advances in computer technology applications lead to the structured analysis and management of biological information which is useful for the exploration of biological processes to enrich in the healthcare sector.

Pharmacy informatics is the new originating information technology, It includes neuroinformatics, bioinformatics, immunoinformatics, geoinformatics, metabolic informatics, and health informatics which are used as a base for the discovery of drugs.

Pharmacoinformatics is becoming a fundamental component of pharmaceutical sciences, Medical informatics focuses on using information processing within the clinical setting for medical billing, patient and resource scheduling, and patient care, Clinical informatics in the use of clinical decision support systems that provide feedback and instructions to healthcare service providers for maximizing patient compliance at the pharmaceutical care.

Manual procedures were tiresome and time-consuming whereas automated computerized instruments accomplish a number of tasks with accurate results in diagnosis, Laboratory Information System (LIS) is used to preside over huge amounts of data, and Instruments function as preprocessors, which will convert the raw data to digital format and finally gives the numerical values in the reports.

Computers are used for the data of medication information, records and documents, sedate administration (making, changing, including, and erasing information in persistent documents to produce reports), business subtleties, In fields of new medication disclosure, sedate structure examination, and manufacturing of medications and in emergency clinic drug store, computers are generally utilized.

Disadvantages of computers in pharmacy

Computers cost a lot of money, and a large hospital needs many computers to keep the system running smoothly, Creating the network to transfer medical records or keep track of billing is an additional initial cost. Lack of Standardization is one of the biggest drawbacks of adding computers and electronic records to the medical field, Different hospitals use different shorthand abbreviations or symbols on medical records than others, and the codes called out during emergencies don’t always mean the same thing in every hospital.

Cloud computing in healthcare powers much of these data capabilities and has created the category of cloud-connected medical devices and related software, Despite the many opportunities for medical devices in healthcare, all of this data being generated and swashing around the internet can be problematic though. 

Cybersecurity risk doesn’t only pertain to the exposure of private data or the ransoms that are associated with data breaches, The risks related to altered data can have serious consequences. Patients and healthcare professionals that are relying on data to make treatment decisions depend on correct and accurate datasets, when data is deleted or altered, it can lead to a wrong diagnosis or treatment plan.

Security is a big problem, When the doctor or hospital is switching to computers or electronic record keeping, you may be worried about the security of your medical records, medical information is added to a closed computer network, but when the Internet connection comes into the network, the system is vulnerable to outside sources, and there is a big problem to the patient privacy and medical record security.

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