Sophistication of Medication Therapy

The sophisticated level of medication therapy that occurs today provides pharmacists much more opportunity to lend their expertise in assessing medication information needs of professionals, patients, or family members, and providing literature to help choose the best medication to use within a class, to convey the appropriate information to help patients correctly and safely use the more potent medications, and to address administration and delivery problems. It is increasingly difficult for physicians and other health professionals to keep up with all of the developments in medication therapy, as well as keep abreast of the other information required for their practice. It is estimated that over 1600 compounds are in various stages of drug development. Several of these drugs could have a substantial impact on clinical practice and drug expenditures once they are commercially available. For instance, it is anticipated that at least 560 of these medications are anticancer agents, which could have an impact on life expectancy, quality of life, and the related expenses associated with the potential need for increased ancillary care, additional physician office visits, or hospitalization. It is important that drugs in the pipeline be monitored by pharmacists to provide adequate time to identify the patient population that will most benefit from the new drug and to help anticipate the cost of treating these patients compared to traditional therapy.,

There is also a trend toward individualization of health care using DNA profiling to determine potential drug effectiveness. Patients may be tested for genomic patterns and their drug therapy will be altered accordingly. There are several potential benefits of using this pharmacogenomic technique: new effective treatments for a variety of medical conditions could be identified faster and in smaller samples, computer modeling can help eliminate the medications that do not work, and because this technique can help identify the best candidates for a particular drug, it can help patients become more productive sooner.