As applications of artificial intelligence continue to evolve, there is exciting potential to incorporate these programs into specialty pharmacy, a panel of experts said during Asembia’s AXS24 Summit, in Las Vegas.

Using AI to personalize medication regimens for patients is one area to watch, said Matt Hawkins, the chief technical officer of CaryHealth, a digital health and AI company. Examples include voice-generated content/text to speech—an assistive technology that uses generative AI to synthesize a conversation—and videos that could “[improve] health outcomes and help pharmacies keep medication adherence high,” he said. “That is exciting to me because it’s going to have a really big impact on the kind of care that you can deliver very quickly, at scale and personalized to an individual.”

Additional pharmacy AI applications include interactive chatbots and virtual reality, said George Van Antwerp, a managing director at Deloitte Consulting.

Mr. Antwerp cited two health systems that are AI innovators. (He declined to identify them due to potential conflicts with other pending projects.) One, a hospital system in the Midwest, recently implemented a chatbot for caregivers of patients with dementia. The chatbot engages with caregivers to coach them, and has an empathy layer built in, so when next used, the chatbot “remembers” the person and can prompt them with a phrase like, “Last time, I suggested you do this with your mother. Did it work?” The program continues to learn but also builds a relationship with the person and could help drive behavior change.

Another health system, on the West Coast, is incorporating augmented and VR programs in the mental health arena to accompany drug therapy, Mr. Van Antwerp noted. The programs help induce a sense of relaxation and calm in patients.

“I’m really fascinated by how … generative AI will complement drug therapy,” he said.

One particularly beneficial aspect of these programs is that they provide educational content to pharmacists working at the counter or specialty pharmacists working remotely, which they can then share with their patients in real time. Focusing that content on adherence could yield real dividends. “We know abandonment of therapy can be very personal,” Mr. Van Antwerp said. “We always like to blame it on forgetfulness and costs, but there’s so many other confounding factors that are important.”

Generative AI programs could potentially personalize content for patients based on social determinants of health data or keywords from their conversations with pharmacists, or identify risk for depression from patients’ voice cadence, he added.

Tapping Into ‘Superhuman Powers’

Sofia Guerra, a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, a venture capital firm, said she likes to think about behaviors, services or actions performed by specialty pharmacy personnel today “that we can give superhuman powers to.” This could include using AI to gather and process data to make clinical decisions or engaging patients and allowing them the ability to have input and ask questions, she noted.

“We think of the use cases today as what’s humanly possible,” Ms. Guerra said. “But I’m really excited about what founders are going to create, or what use cases they will find in different functions that are … new behaviors that we haven’t even thought about.”

How far in the future are such applications? “I think we’re overestimating what AI will do in two years and underestimating what it can do in 10,” she stressed. “Changing human behavior is incredibly hard. You may have a great [application], but how you enable the people that are doing the work or engaging with this platform on a day-to-day basis to actually adopt something is going to take a while.”

Some pharmacy leaders are trying to speed up that process. Mr. Van Antwerp said the CEO of one pharma company he is working with challenged his team leaders to come up with their best-use case for AI within 90 days.

From there, the company will prioritize the ideas and determine which ones they will build, he said.

Such efforts are laudable, but there likely will be many failed pilots that don’t achieve what people intend, Ms. Guerra said.

Mr. Hawkins agreed, but added a caveat: “Don’t be afraid to try things and see them not work, because we don’t know yet what’s fully possible.”

The speakers reported no relevant financial disclosures beyond their stated employment.