At the forefront of healthcare transformation, the Pharmacy Innovation Lab is pioneering the integration of cutting-edge technology, data science, and innovative education to revolutionize healthcare education and practice. We’re shaping the future of healthcare through three key effort across Technology, Data, and Education. From AR-powered training to open-source data education and creating the future of the profession, we’re committed to advancing practice and patient care. Explore our projects and learn how to bring change to healthcare.
Current/Recent Projects
Interprofessional AI Collaboration
in Pharmacy Education
Our innovative project brings together pharmacy and computer science students to develop a generative AI platform for summarizing standardized patient interviews. This interdisciplinary effort aims to enhance the pharmacy curriculum by integrating cutting-edge technology into patient care skills training. Led by a student pharmacist as product manager, with technical development by senior computer science students, the project created a proof-of-concept tool for the PharmD program. The collaboration fostered valuable learning experiences in product management, interprofessional communication, and real-world AI application. See updates/progress.
Digital Health - Diabetes
We are exploring the intersection of digital health and diabetes management. This collaborative effort brings together experts from multiple universities to develop educational resources, conduct patient-centered research, and create case studies on the application of digital health tools in diabetes care. We’re conducting rigorous research to address critical healthcare challenges. By engaging clinical learners and practitioners, we’re building a foundation for the future of diabetes management technology across practice settings. See example of past work from conferences and publications.
Healthcare Practice and
Digital Therapeutics
We are seeking to leverage the potential of digital therapeutics in across healthcare. Our works seeks to assess pharmacists’ readiness for digital therapeutics, focusing on community pharmacy settings. Through surveys and interviews, we’re evaluating pharmacists’ preparedness, attitudes, and competencies in implementing these innovative health solutions. This research aims to identify gaps and create pathways for enhancing pharmacy’s role in digital health, potentially influencing a $14 billion healthcare sector. This will work support advancing pharmacy’s role in cutting-edge healthcare technologies. See updates/progress.
V-Safe: Patient Engagement
for Vaccine Safety Data:
One of our key projects for patient experiences with health and technology focuses on evaluating the user experience of V-safe, a smartphone-based tool for post-COVID-19 vaccination health check-ins. This collaborative research aims to characterize the users of the V-safe application and understand their experiences. Through a comprehensive survey of vaccine recipients, we’re exploring motivations for app usage, barriers to adoption, and overall user satisfaction. See updates/progress.
Our Approach
Technology
Healthcare is undergoing a revolution through the digital technologies that are growing in all aspects of practice. Pharmacists are in a position to utilize novel digital health products and services to expand patient care endeavors. This discussion will review the breadth of digital health technologies and the use case for these technologies in pharmacy.
AR/VR - Compounding
Sterile Compounding and Augmented Reality
Training in sterile compounding is a component of pharmacy education and training across the country. The resources required for this training can be prohibitive due to the time, personnel, and space requirements. Coordinating the resources, trainee experiences, and feedback required in appropriate training is a universal problem for schools of pharmacy, hospital pharmacies, and institutions that provide customized pharmacy sterile compounding for healthcare. Our work has focused on iterating an augmented reality platform to train users in sterile compounding practices using custom hardware controllers and software to teach concepts of air flow and aseptic technique. V1 Link V2 Link; V3 Link; V4 Link
Data
Pharmacy is experiencing a vast growth of data. From molecular, clinical, financial, and other sources, data volume is outgrowing data utility. The technical expertise of data science and the application of data in health have great potential for improving operational, financial, and clinical outcomes. The challenge is bridging technical expertise with data and content expertise in healthcare. The opportunities with data at the Pharmacy Innovation Lab will bridge this gap.
Open Data Resources
Curated open education resources form a complementary foundation and platform to share about data in healthcare – Learn more about our work with data here.
Education
Pharmacy education is facing a future in which students will be required to extend their contribution to patient care, practice, and health care beyond just knowledge. The pharmacy profession will demand of students skills required to succeed in this new age. These different approaches to education test, adapt, and growth through the efforts of the Innovation Lab.
Curriculum
The Innovation curriculum includes courses, experiential learning, and projects across a variety of settings. Some of the courses include Python, Pharmacy Innovation, and Special Topics.
Learn more about current courses Program here.
PIER Program
Pharmacy Innovation Experience Research (PIER)
This program offered by the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy to high school and undergraduate students to help navigate and learn about the various paths of pharmacy through an innovative curriculum, lifelong mentorship, and unique experiential sites. More than 500 students have been through this program to strengthen and diversify the pharmacy pipeline.
Learn more about the Program here. (Link to PIER)