Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on clinical pharmaceutical services: A scoping review.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Digital technologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated and integrated, but the scope of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is wider technologies and innovations are diffusing faster and more widely. Despite the extensive use of telepharmacy technology by patients and pharmacists, there is an absence of research that examines the use of telepharmacy. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the current evidence concerning the impact of the 4IR on the provision of pharmaceutical services. METHODS: A scoping review based on the PCC (Population, Concept, and Context) mnemonic was conducted in Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science. Population included pharmacist/clinical pharmaceutical services, the concept referred to the 4IR and the context was open. Electronic searches retrieved 8,694 articles that were screened by titles and abstracts. The search yielded 59 studies that were analyzed in terms of country of focus, publication year, type of publication, main technologies, types of pharmacy services, and the role of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. RESULTS: Most of the included studies were conducted in the United States and were published between 2005 and 2021, with the highest number of publications in the year of 2021. The majority of included articles were observational studies. Technologies addressed in the studies were those within the scope of telepharmacy, and most of the articles discussed more than one pharmaceutical service, with medication therapy management as the most frequent. CONCLUSIONS: The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the use of technologies, identifying promising niches for pharmacists in the field of Pharmaceutical Care. This should encourage pharmacists to fortify their capacity to adopt new technologies in the provision of pharmaceutical services. The frequent use of various technologies has been demonstrated, which indicates the exigency for further health education actions by the pharmacist.