Pharmacy and Augmented Reality (AR): What are the possibilities?
It's late in the evening, and I'm running to the pharmacy. Kids at home with a fever. Where is the medicine? What medicine? Let's assume I open the store's app and ask it, "what fever medicine can I give to a 6-year-old?" Then it shows a guided path on the floor I follow and highlights a box of medication on the shelf for me, alongside a discount I can use at the register.
This will likely be the future, with a combination of augmented reality (AR) and the ability of AI chatbots that can process consumer requests. The pharmacy companies will leverage this to drive consumer engagement and services, and I can see manufacturers see this as a win to help build brand awareness. Maybe a video would pop up walking me through how to administer the medication and giving other helpful advice. Beats having to Google or scroll through YouTube videos to gauge an answer. I want it now.
But aside from just the consumer experience, what else could be done for the pharmacy itself? I saw a post on Twitter that showed how AR could be used in everyday life, and it got me thinking about the possibilities.
This isn't new for me; I've actually written a lot about AR/VR in the past and published about it in several journals. But I feel like since Google Glass failed, there was a hiatus in interest. But now AI is making huge inroads, tech is better, and we see companies investing in tech again. More focus on AR and mixed reality is becoming a discussion point, so I wanted to reexplore the topic here.
How AR Could be Used by the Pharmacy
Example of requesting to locate a medication in the pharmacy.
There are many ways that AR could be used by the pharmacy team to augment current operations. Some that come to mind are:
Find a medication on the shelf
Get stock notifications related to low-supply issues
Find and locate out-of-date medications needing to be returned
Perform pill identification
Pill counts on a tray
Help identify liquids and mixing components
Compounding
Provide counseling tips
Convert scripts to digital format and upload them to the pharmacy management system
Teleservices
Find patient medications in the waiting bin
Provide task lists
Help highlight where to inject a patient with a vaccine
Show metrics
Incoming calls
So, yeah. There's a lot (and I'm sure you can think of more! Feel free to comment)! I put together a same of possible mockups for AR in the pharmacy, and hope you enjoy them!