Experts: Understanding Pharmacy Forecasts Critical to Informing, Developing Care Models

In a conversation with Pharmacy Times® at NACDS Total Store Expo, Scott Biggs, director of supplier services at IQVIA, and Doug Long, vice president of industry relations at IQVIA, share current trends and forecasts in the pharmaceutical industry, with some key data still not having returned to pre-pandemic levels. Biggs and Long discuss the essential role that industry forecasts have in understanding the future of the profession and informing physicians to better care for patients.

Pharmacy Times®: Are there any future trends or issues you’re tracking for the next few years and beyond?

Scott Biggs, Director of Supplier Services at IQVIA: I think biosimilar adoption is one of the ones we're watching most closely. If we do not continue to see biosimilar adoption improve, we could see some real challenges in the biosimilar industry.

Pharmacy Times: How have artificial intelligence and other technological advancements affected pharmacy trends? Is uptake of these mechanisms increasing?

Doug Long, Vice President of Industry Relations, IQVIA: I think it's too early to tell. I think it's with workload, the way that it is, anything that you can do to offload some of this workload that they have. When you think about pharmacy, you know, they were just dispensing prescriptions for COVID. Now, they're doing COVID shots, RSV shots, influenza shots, and actually screenings now. So how do you do that in an efficient way? And that kind of permeates the whole healthcare system.

Pharmacy Times: Why are following trends and being up-to-date with current issues in the industry important for pharmacists?

Biggs: think it's important to have an education on what the trends are, so that way you can keep up with them [and] know, as opposed to having the trends educate you and then getting behind the ball.

Pharmacy Times: How can pharmacists utilize trends to provide better patient care?

Biggs: If the pharmacists have a good understanding of what the trends in the industry are, then they can know how to pivot, to respond to the patient's needs or respond to the trends that are going on currently.

Long: Well, I think that you know to that question about artificial intelligence, that also goes with pharmacy automation. You want to have the pharmacist interfacing with the customer, rather than counting pills out in the back. So that is a necessary thing [and] step forward, particularly as the role of pharmacists has expanded.

Pharmacy Times: Have there been any data that was affected by the pandemic? Has there been any bounce back since then?

Long: Well, what's bounced back is prescriptions. What's not bounced back is screenings. Screenings are down below the levels they were before COVID, elective procedures are still down, and now you have hospital, doctor, and telehealth visits down from what they were before.

Biggs: I think what goes along with the elective procedures and the screenings is, quite often medications go along with those. So, if you're having some screenings, you may have some colonoscopy prep type stuff. If you're having elective procedures, you might have pain meds or things are prescribed afterwards. So those things are being missed as prescriptions, with some of these still being behind.

Pharmacy Times: How do each of you use your positions to not only shed light on relevant forecasts and changes in trends, but also reach pharmacists and keep them informed?

Biggs: Doug and I travel to a lot of different industry events, so we work with a lot of different associations and a lot of retailers and manufacturers to make sure we're doing the best job we can with all the data that we have, to inform and educate what the trends are in the industry today.

Long: I would agree with that. But one thing that we have not mentioned yet is store closings. As we'll be talking about in our presentation tomorrow, there's 6000 fewer pharmacies than there were 6 years ago. That number is accelerating, and we'll probably be talking about pharmacy deserts in the future, because the economics are pretty horrific right now,

Pharmacy Times: What can be done to reduce the creation of pharmacy deserts as data points to an increase in their prevalence?

Biggs: I think there's a lot that all the parties involved, we have to figure out how to work together to make sure that the end game is that we all serve the patient, that we still continue to serve the patient. You know, the National Institutes of Health just did a study where [they determined if there] our pharmacy does existing already today, and they're existing in the areas where the most needy people are. We talk about social determinants of health, and we talk about people with lower educations, with lower incomes. Those are the places right now where the pharmacies are closing down. So, I think we need to figure out a way to get a good reimbursement model in place that takes care of the pharmacies that they can continue to fill the needs of the most needy patients.