Telepharmacy Pros And Cons

2/9/14 5:30-6:30pm- Began researching and bookmarked some articles to review later.

2/22/14 10:00 am- Began reading a few articles and found a few worth pursuing for information. This article will only be used for information not for one of the ten that need to be found from a medical journal.

McCarthy, K. (2013). Telepharmacy. OLR Research Report.

The author outlines telepharmacy benefits and objectives and details the usage of telepharmacy in Kansas, Washington, North Dakota, Idaho, Illinois, California, Connecticut and Nevada. He discusses the legal side of telepharmacy and outlines different policies and laws present in different sates and the effect that this has on the use, method and spectrum of telepharmacy. He also includes state initiatives to implement more widespread use of such programs in order to benefit rural communities.

3/2/14 9:00 am- Workday in class summarized a few more articles.

1) Scott, D. M., Friesner, D. L., Rathke, A. M., & Doherty-Johnsen S. (2014). Medication error reporting in rural critical access hospitals in the North Dakota telepharmacy project. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 71 (1), 58-67. The authors reported on a 17-month study done where remote pharmacists used telepharmacy technology to review medication orders, identify quality-related events and code clinical interventions. The results of the study show that the North Dakota Telepharmacy model is helpful in resolving quality- related events in critical access hospitals in rural areas. Also, during the study the use of telepharmacy services became more widespread, leading researchers to believe that physicians became more comfortable using the new technology to enhance patient safety.

2) Schneider, P. J. (2013). Evaluating t...

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...e-Health, (18) 6, 470-4. Pharmacists are a vital part of cancer treatment in developed countries. However there is a shortage of pharmacists in developing countries and even then their roles are often only selling and dispending general drugs. In this study the feasibility of supplying educational tools for pharmacists by telecommunication in order to improve cancer care in developing countries. In order to initiate this study researchers held conferences via web streaming about telepharmacy and in order to measure satisfaction with the chats, participants completed a survey. 10 countries and 345 people were involved in the study and generally good experiences with the conferences were reported. Telecommunication and pharmacy education are good tools in order to provide better cancer care in developing countries while also remaining inexpensive and cost effective.