On 24th of June 2021, College of pharmacy students from the PharmD program and Master of Clinical Pharmacy in addition to many Faculty attended an eye opening career counselling session with Dr. Ahmed Sultan, Senior Pharmacy Informatics Specialist at American Hospital in Dubai (AHD).
During the session, Dr. Sultan introduced the concept of pharmacy informatics, its relation to artificial intelligence, the role of the informatics pharmacist, and the career pathways in pharmacy informatics and pharmacy automation. This was followed by an overview the challenges facing the implementation of pharmacy automation systems in traditional hospitals and the recent trends in pharmacy automation solutions in the hospital setting. Most interestingly, Dr. Sultan emphasized on the key and important role of informatics pharmacists in the implementation, operation and troubleshooting these pharmacy automation models.
At the end of the session, Dr. Sultan received several questions from the students and engaged with them in a futuristic discussion about pharmacy automation in the United Arab Emirates and how this could provide further career opportunities for pharmacists despite some expected challenges.
