The implementation of IoT connectivity represents a strategic shift toward a more efficient and data-centric future for retail pharmacies. Harnessing the power of real-time data is critical for unlocking productivity at a time when it’s needed most.
With a projected value of $925 billion in 2023, the IoT market is experiencing a period of rapid growth. This upward trajectory is expected to continue, reaching $1.3 trillion by 2026 driven by a 13% compound annual growth rate. It can be attributed to the rising need for IoT connectivity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing data across operational devices became more crucial than ever to maintain resilience — driving a major YoY increase in IoT adoption from 15 billion in 2015 to 43 billion in 2022. The momentum is showing no signs of slowing down, with adoption rates expected to hit 75 billion by 2025. It underscores the inherent value of IoT: bridging data connectivity gaps between the physical and digital worlds.
Imagine a future where inventory management is fully autonomous, with systems automatically replenishing stock based on real-time data. Envision machinery predicting its own preventative maintenance needs to avoid costly downtime and ensure smooth operations. Consider healthcare tailored to individual patients in real-time, based on continuous data streams from connected devices. These are just a few glimpses into the potential of how IoT connectivity data revolutionizes industries for the better.
The rise of IoT connectivity comes at an ideal time for the retail pharmacy industry. It is ushering new opportunities for retail pharmacies to address key challenges with data amid staffing shortages and increased U.S. prescription spending. From preserving vaccines and lab samples to filling scripts, providing customer service, and following compliance protocols, pharmacy staffs are forced to juggle numerous concurrent workflows during a single shift.
A 2022 National Library of Medicine study even found the average pharmacist completes 25 different tasks per hour. When teams are understaffed, this can lead to burnout that impacts care quality, compliance accuracy, and store profitability. However, leveraging actionable data insights from IoT-enabled technologies has emerged as an effective way to mitigate these risks by streamlining pharmacy workflows and driving improved efficiency.
Prescriptive insights to inform decision-making
In understaffed pharmacy settings, data-driven decision making is worth its weight in gold. Pharmacy shelves integrated with IoT connectivity solutions assess prescription inventory levels in real-time, creating an automated data feedback loop that generates prescriptive insights to restock orders before shortages occur. For pharmacists, this not only eliminates the stress of scrambling for missing medications, but also allows them to make data-driven decisions for effective inventory management.
By automating the analysis of historical data and trends, pharmacists optimize inventory levels to ensure they have the right medications available without unnecessary overstocking. This helps mitigate the impact of drug shortages, ensuring that generic versions or alterative options are ordered to meet patient needs. In addition, IoT data delivers crucial insights for continuously improving other aspects of their operations, such as restructuring back-of-house floor layouts for efficiency, tailoring staff scheduling based on peak periods, or identifying opportunities to reduce spending.
Automated condition monitoring to improve compliance efficiency
The pharmaceutical industry operates within a rigorous framework of regulations, demanding pharmacy staffs to maintain meticulous compliance records on medication state and quality. Compliance has always been a crucial, yet time-consuming aspect of their operations. In this area, IoT-enabled condition monitoring solutions have emerged as a transformative technology to enhance workflows.
IoT connectivity data helps eliminate tedious manual processes and paperwork from the equation. It provides continuous granular data streams, painting a real-time picture of the state and quality of medications, vaccines, and lab samples while they are stored. Sensor-equipped medication cabinets and refrigerators are continually monitored for temperature and humidity levels, generating real-time reports that automatically document compliance with regulatory requirements.
This frees up valuable time for pharmacists to focus on higher-level tasks and patient care while still fulfilling essential regulatory requirements with precision and accuracy. Compounded at scale, it also makes a major impact for keeping patients safe and avoiding costly regulatory non-compliance penalties.
Proactive risk mitigation to drive safety and cost reduction
Another critical advantage of IoT data lies in proactive risk mitigation. By capturing temperature and humidity data anomalies in real-time, IoT-enabled sensing and monitoring solutions help pharmacies identify risks and implement swift intervention measures before they disrupt operations.
For example, upon noticing an unusual temperature drop inside a refrigerator where COVID-19 vaccines are stored, pharmacy staff take quick action to move the products into an alternative (and functioning) refrigerator to maintain their efficacy. Then, they facilitate measures to address the equipment performance issue, such as making a necessary repair and implementing more stringent preventative maintenance processes to prevent it from happening again.
In the wake of a widescale recall for an over-the-counter medication, pharmacists leverage IoT data in collaboration with distribution suppliers to quickly identify the impacted inventory and prevent it from reaching patients. This helps protect not only product efficacy and safety, but also brand reputation and trust in the eyes of patients.
The implementation of IoT connectivity represents a strategic shift toward a more efficient and data-centric future for retail pharmacies. Harnessing the power of real-time data is critical for unlocking productivity at a time when it’s needed most.
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