ABSTRACT
Introduction: The rapid adoption of digital technologies has revolutionized pharmaceutical care delivery, facilitating remote consultations, medication adherence monitoring, and personalized treatment interventions. Moreover, digital platforms have become indispensable tools for pharmacists in optimizing medication therapy, detecting drug interactions, and ensuring patient safety.
Aim: To examine the extent to which community pharmacists have adopted digital health tools, the challenges that hinder their effective utilization and to make future predictions about emerging digital tools in the pharmacy practice.
Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-developed, questionnaire among pharmacists practicing in community pharmacies in Benin City, Edo state, Nigeria. Informed consent was obtained from each participant before data collection. Descriptive statistics and association using Pearson chi-square were performed using SPSS version 23.
Result: The study received a 90.9% response rate to the questionnaire. The majority of the community pharmacists (55.2%) have moderately adopted digital tools while 25.1% of the participants have adopted digital health tools to a small extent, and 17.6% have adopted them to a great extent. About 49.8% of the pharmacists have adopted telemedicine consultation while 50.2% do not use telemedicine consultation. The majority of the pharmacists 59.0% were using social media, and 31.0% of the pharmacists were using health apps. The majority of the community pharmacies used point of sale, a significant number of the pharmacists were using inventory tracking tools and a good number used pharmacy management systems. The majority of the pharmacists 61.1% do not have sufficient training on digital tools utilization while 38.9% had undergone sufficient training. The majority of the pharmacist’s response on the barriers that influence the adoption of digital healthcare was lack of training followed by technical issues. The majority of the community pharmacists suggested Artificial intelligence for medication management as the possible digital tool that’s likely to be adopted in Nigeria with 64.4% responses.
Conclusion: The results show a reasonable rate of adoption overall, with point-of-sale systems being the most often used instrument. Nevertheless, there is still little use of other resources, such as patient portals and electronic health records. The fact that pharmacists have not received adequate training on these technologies is a major obstacle to their adoption. The majority of pharmacists who responded to the study expressed optimism about artificial intelligence.
