Future pharmacists as designers, makers and change-agents

Instead of augmented reality shopping for clothings, imagine a world in the future where robots serve as pharmacists. That drugs get precisely designed and 3D-printed for you based on your genomic data. All these can happen without leaving the comfort of your home. A possible scenario for our future pharmacists and patients in 2050? 

 To equip our future pharmacists, today I conducted a workshop with my students on website creation with Google Sites. It’s a part of the Health Tech Challenge in FAR212 course. In the workshop, I covered some basics pertaining digital/media literacy for students.

It’s an effort in making a tiny part of pharmacy curriculum more relevant to Generation Z students. Something they could relate to. Something they could offer to the world. As designers, makers and agents of change. Of their world.

Yes, my students are Gen Zers–a phrase coined for a cohort of generation born in 1995 onwards–who grow up with mobile technology than desktop computers and prefer to post about their life on Instagram than Facebook. Well… according to a student of mine, Facebook is for family use. (Ouch! That’s probably how old I am)

They are also known as iGeneration, ‘Instagram’ has become a verb and not just a social media app.

To my surprise, they seemed unaware how to create simple and free websites using Google Sites – despite all having Gmail accounts. Perhaps there is no occasion to create a website.

Connecting the dots – from 20th to 21st century

In this FAR212 medicinal chemistry course, we try to connect (and extend) the dots beyond the realms of this area. Because at the end of the day, the knowledge in improving a drug structure (medicinal chemistry) relates to a drug’s potency, its clinical uses and patients.

We want to shape the students’ thinking, not only within the tiny world but the world beyond the university and daily student’s life. 

And this year we want to extend the dots beyond a typical image of a pharmacist: ‘hiding’ behind a counter, giving drug counselling or health advices, educating patients in white lab coats. Entirely fine in 20th century – when the roles of a pharmacist were more defined and geared towards providing information and assistance to doctors, nurses, patients and customers in terms of their medications and regimens. Because technology is changing the game.

And we are at the cusp of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR).

Experts are so yesterday?

“There is no expert of the future, there is always an expert of yesterday,” argued Jack Ma in a recent IMF and World Bank meeting in Bali.

Today patients can easily get these information from Google Search, social media and other sites. At a tap of an icon. Buttons are a thing of the past. So it seems in designs of new mobile devices.

Armed with the-once ‘privileged’ information, patients can now challenge a doctor or pharmacist on the appropriateness of their therapy. Same goes to fake or “engineered” information to promote a certain drug or therapy.

How do we continue educating our customers/patients in the 21st century? Or rather do they need ‘educating’ by us? Food for thought since  technology and globalisation have helped ‘flattened’ the world.

3D-print your own drugs

Where automation, robotics and internet of things (IoT) are things of norm in the 4IR.  Self-driving cars, 3D-printed cars and houses, biomedical 3D-printed organs are already available nowadays. Perhaps in not-so-distant future, technology would make it possible for a patient to 3D-print their own drugs (not synthesise!) rather then buying it from pharmacies or clinics. No ‘middle-men’ needed. 

I wonder if we use VR/AR/hologram technology to visualise and track the movement of a drug in a patient’s body? Holograms that give visuals of  insulin vs. blood sugar levels for diabetic patients. Sounds less invasive than getting a finger jab to draw blood on a daily basis for monitoring. HoloLens by Microsoft is here and being used as pre-operative procedure for spinal surgery.

Far-fetched it may sound, but it begs the question, how would rapid advances in technology shape the future of the pharmacy profession?

In era of the 4IR, it is predicted that we would be less reliant on hard skills. Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians were made redundant in some parts of the world, thanks to the installation of  robots and high tech solutions for dispensing drugs. 

So what’s more valuable to companies are collaborative team work, critical thinking, creative skills and empathy. To get a job at Google or Apple, the focus is on more skills than university degrees. Interpreting patterns in Big Data and forecasting trends would be considered highly sought-after competency.

We are increasingly seeing big industry players in some areas for instance, transport, publishing and music – solutions coming from technology companies e.g. Tesla, Grab, Amazon and Apple.

Would they also be interested in affordable home 3D-printing technology that print out drugs at a breakneck pace? What about drug registration process? Like Grab or Uber, some regulations need to be in place to protect the interests of consumers, workforce and government agencies. Food for thought.

So how would the future look like?

I grew up with OHP and acetates, type-writers and tape recorders. I grew up at an age where things are ‘slower’. So I wonder, what would the future working environment look like in 2025 for my Gen Zer students? Do we have future skills that machines don’t and won’t have (yet!)?

How do we future-proof the pharmacy profession? What to equip them with?

Coming back to the FAR212 course, this semester we pose a Health Tech Challenge to our Gen Zer students. Can they think of addressing a problem/issue/challenge in health from the technological point of view? 😎

To be honest, this is not the first time we have exposed our students to the same tools/platforms used in modern medicinal chemistry research labs. Thanks to advances in computing power and the infrastructure of the university. These made it possible to stay current.

To start my students’ thinking on this challenge, I covered the following in the beginning of the website workshop:

• Copyright, Creative Commons and types of licences
• Source of free and worry-free photos,
• Image resolutions – and their purposes. 
  

These formed the basics in digital/media literacy knowledge that they can use in the future without the fear of ‘stealing’ (with or without intent) another person’s work from the internet or other media.

But how to propose a possible tech solution?

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Henry Ford

In the workshop, I shared simple step-by-step approach on how to approach this task. The approach is shown as a visual summary: 

My students have already selected their own topics (Step 1). Reading around the topic would help them identifying what they wish to share with the world (Step 2). Additionally, they would pick up persistent problems or issues common to the disease or conditions. From there, they could move to Step 3 by identifying one small problem they want and can solve – a tip I learned from a dialogue session with Prof. Yunus, the Nobel Laureate know for his work in social business. With a problem in hand, they can then move to Step 4 – hopefully shifting their thinking as a problem-solver. Here they need to think of app features that can help solve the problem identified earlier.

Design a free website using Google Sites

The last 30 minutes of the workshop were spent on putting together the various assets and elements to create a 1-page website.

Students were asked to create a website using the content that already have prepared as a group report. Content is the main asset in any website design. Invariably, the group report is prepared in a group of 9-10 students. Work is divided into smaller sections–each section is taken care by 1-2 students.  Many a time, each work in silos; they don’t really talk to one another.

Key to this Health Tech Challenge is team effort. It is highly recommended that those working in the background section of the report to hold discussions with the student(s) tasked as website designer. What’s cool about using Google Sites is the ability to invite others to edit/view the draft website. A great online environment where collaborative work can happen in a team.

Below is an example of a 1-page website designed by the end of the workshop. Check out this website on Avian Flu.

It seems that one can design the entire 1-page website within the constraints of the 1.5 hour workshop. But it may take several days to get to the point of being satisfied with the website designs.

Perhaps designing a website could be done as individual or small-group projects. Advances in technology has tremendously help us creating digital assets and media easily. These can assist us ‘educating’ our patients, customers wherever they are. For free.

Equipped with these awareness and know-hows, I hope our future pharmacists can take charge and be a part of bigger collaborative efforts to address global health challenges – as makers and change-agents in 2025 and beyond. 

A step into the future.