The role of the Pharmacist in this new era

Pharmacists play an important role in this emerging era where patients are becoming proactive in their treatment decision. It is true that patients can find lots of information online and come to us with a good understanding of what to expect from their medication treatments, but they still need the Pharmacist to let them know if the information found is accurate. There are many resources in the web, but it is our job to be prepared and updated with new information to complement the knowledge of our patients with important facts that they could be missing or misunderstanding. In addition Pharmacists need to be knowledgeable regarding the different online resources that are available to patients, so we can help them self manage their health the correct way. Our role is to provide websites and mobile applications where they could find information regarding pharmacology, adverse reactions, monitoring parameters and make it understandable to them. This will help us to increase patient compliance; decrease errors and monitor specify key points in each person’s therapy to increase medications outcomes.

What does the statistics tell us?

It is very important to understand the population statistics with respect to health information seeking online in order to know how are patients reacting to this whole new way of managing their treatment decisions and overall health. The Statistics say that 83 % of online adults are searching for health information which is 61% of the total population. As we can see this is high number which means that more people are engaging in this innovative behavior. Other important facts are that 45% of people looked for information about OTC and Rx medications respectively in 2008 as opposed to35 % in 2002 and 66% looked for a specific disease medical problem. These numbers take us to the most important one which is 60 % of e-patients said health information found online affected their treatment decision. This data is telling us that a whole new era is emerging and more patients are starting to fall into the category called e-patients. The doctor centric model of the past is being replaced by new model which is patient-centric and proactive (Zerhouni).

Are patients ready for this new era?

We have three major factors that are affecting the way patients look for health information online: Accsses ,Literacy and Personal responsability. Access is not such a big barrier as it was years ago. As of this year 74% of the US population has internet access, but  we still have 26% of people who are not quite getting into the change and we dont know how long it is going to take for them to adapt to these innovations of technology. eHealth Literacy plays an important  role in which patients are using internet to manage their health. Many patients with internet access dont know where to look up health information or dont have the skills necessary to get good health care access online. Finally if the patient feels that it is his or her personal responsability to manage their health ,they will look up information to share with the provider during the interaction. Unfortunatelly some patients feel that the physicians have the authority when recommending treatments and managing their health. Again, there are many factors affecting how people engage in managing their health online. It may take some time until 100% of the population start making use of the technological resources available.