With how technology is progressing, the pharmaceutical industry is changing. Most particularly, how medicine is made and where it is sold will change. Let's get started.
Doctors, the pharmacist?: With the advent of 3D printers, along with other devices, doctors may try to cut out the middle man in their patient’s life. Some doctors will start producing medicine in their offices and selling it there. 3D printers can print pills customized toward individual patients on demand. Same with liquid medications, they can be produced on demand if the appropriate chemicals are available. This will mean that doctors will be getting raw materials for making pills and liquid solutions to their offices so they can make the medications as needed. What is interesting is that this will reduce or eliminate the need for many forms of prescription drug insurance as the medical portion of the insurance that covers doctors will also cover the cost of the drugs being bought (if made in the office). What is also good about this is that those drugs will be cheaper as they no longer have to factor in the cost of manufacturing the drug itself, just the cost of the chemicals, shipping cost, and the cost of the power used to make the medication.
The Pharmacist: The role of a pharmacist will generally not change. Only hospitals and doctors who have a licenses to make their own medicines (and if they can afford the cost of the equipment) will make custom medication in house. As such, the pharmacist (especially retail pharmacists) will have the 3D printers, and solution mixtures to make custom medications. They will inevitably sell custom drugs along side traditional prescriptions made by pharmaceutical companies. Even then the pharmacist may just have to input data into a computer, to make and dispense medications. They then have to simply know drug interactions so as to avoid any negative effects that a patient may suffer.
Heck, they may even do this through a video phone, but that
remains to be seen.
Pharmacy staff: As some one who works as a technician in a pharmacy, I know I will be replaced by a robot. That robot will act in the same way as an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). All you do is put some form of identification in the machine to find your medication (or the medication of the person your picking up for) and then pay for it. Insurance will be scanned with bar codes or radio frequency identification chips (RFID chips) to bill the insurance companies. From there it will tell you your co-payment. As to whether the insurance will cover your medication or not is another matter. From there you pay and take your medicine home.
More freedom: Currently (or at least in NY) pharmacy staff cannot give a person an equivalent drug to a patient if they are out of stock, or the insurance does not cover the medication. The patient needs to get a new prescription to get the other drug. Thus, future pharmacies will be able to dispense such medications if they are the exact formula or in the same class of medication. More so if the insurance will cover the other medication more and the patient is not allergic to it. In fact, insurance data bases, doctor’s medical files and patient drug files may become linked so that everyone at every level of the health care system can see what is going on with the patient. So we at the pharmacy will finally be able to answer the question as to if a certain drug is covered by their insurance. Not to mention pharmacists will be able to ensure that there will be no negative drug reactions as they currently cannot see if you the patient filled at a different pharmacy or not, and what medications you are getting at that other pharmacy.
Home made: Some medicines may be allowed to be produced at home. 3D printers and similar devices may become as ubiquitous as the cell phone. As such, those devices may be allowed to be used to make medications at home. This means more people can self medicate themselves more. There may even be a function that allows you to scan your prescription and input the chemicals into the hopper to make your medications right there and then. It is more convenient, but certain regulatory hurdles will still have to be overcome (not to mention those who will use the technology for illegal purposes).
Conclusion: Most of this is hypothetical. How medicine evolves is really up in the air. Regulations may prevent the spread of the technology. Fear of a computer glitch causing the medicine being made turning into a poison may be too strong and thus shut down the idea completely for a period of time. Also, many businesses prefer to have people working for them at registers and filling prescriptions because of that human element. As such, people will be removed from the positions of insurance billing, and selling the medication if the costs of paying an individual, and other burdens become overwhelming. No one knows what the future really holds, and the field of medicine is slow to adopt changes in practices out of fear of other portions being outmoded. It remains to be seen how our medical field evolves, but when it does it will usually be for the better.
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