Q&A: What Role Will Pharmacists Play in Precision Medicine?
George Van Antwerp, MBA, discusses how the role of the pharmacist will evolve with the integration of precision medicine into the health systems setting.
Precision medicine, which includes different technologies like pharmacogenetic testing and gene therapies, aims to address unmet needs and match a patient with the right treatment at the right dosage. In a recent commentary published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, George Van Antwerp, MBA, discussed the key roles that pharmacists can play in precision medicine’s creation and its delivery to the patient.1
Q&A: What Role Will Pharmacists Play in Precision Medicine? / THE STARBOY94 - stock.adobe.com
In an interview with Drug Topics®, Van Antwerp, the senior vice president of Product Innovation and Strategic Planning at Prime Therapeutics, discussed how the role of pharmacists will evolve with the integration of precision medicine into the health systems setting, and how pharmacists can collaborate with other healthcare providers to ensure precision medicine therapies are tailored appropriately to patients' individual needs in a cost-effective manner.
READ MORE: Pharmacists Will Play Key Role in Integration of Precision Medicine
Drug Topics: How do you see the role of pharmacists evolving with the integration of precision medicine into the health systems setting?
George Van Antwerp, MBA: If you think about the future of precision medicine and where this is happening, most of us talk about this on the high dollar drugs, you're going to see this be a driver for health systems and their overall role in specialty pharmacy. If you think down one click below that, around the pharmacist, you're going to start to see them play a variety of roles. They can help figure out the patient's genetic and drug profile by working with the patient and the data to help figure out where and when it's appropriate to take a test and how to use the results of the test. They're also going to play a role in working on the dosing, which will vary by which type of drug we're talking about, administering the drug in some cases, also talking with both the physician and the patient about things like risks and side effects. As we know, pharmacists will also contribute to the overall patient's comfort and understanding, which will drive adherence.
Drug Topics: How can pharmacists collaborate with other healthcare providers to ensure precision medicine therapies are tailored appropriately to patients' individual needs in a cost-effective manner?
Van Antwerp: One of the most important things as we think about pharmacists as part of the overall care team, is as they get more and more recognition as a provider, they need to have access to the electronic medical records for them to better collaborate with physicians and the prescribers. That's going to help them improve access to the precision medicine. It's also going to allow them to think about the different roles they can play in terms of collecting data, prescribing a test that the patient should take, working with the prescriber to help interpret the test data and pick the appropriate medication and the appropriate dose.
We also know a lot of these medications require some follow up and monitoring after the fact, so they can serve as a localized site in the community to monitor the patient and for the patient to talk to a clinician about what's going on. I think we can also think about how they may, in some cases, get trained to play a little bit of the genetic counselor and help interpret some of the results, because we know interpretation of genetic results that leads to the precision medicine can sometimes be complicated, both for the patient, the prescriber, and others.
Drug Topics: Is there anything else you wanted to say?
Van Antwerp: I think this is a really exciting area. If we think about the cell and gene therapy innovation that's happening, if we think about CRISPR technology out there, if we even look a few years out, I talk frequently about things like 3D printed drugs, and how that'll allow us to get to precision dosing at an individual level, there's a lot of opportunity for us to make the effectiveness of medication much higher and to really make sure that we're matching a patient's needs based on where they are in a disease, their weight, other drugs they're taking, and make it easier for them both to take the medication, but also for the medication to be much more effective. As we do that, that's going to allow us to get to a much better health environment where we see the effectiveness of drugs even higher than they are today. I think this precision medicine, or personalized medicine, is going to really be the next frontier of innovation.
READ MORE: Health System Pharmacy Resource Center
