Artificial intelligence in pharmacy

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative technology within the pharmaceutical sciences, offering innovative solutions across drug discovery, personalised medicine, clinical trials, and pharmacy operations. The increasing complexity of healthcare demands more efficient, accurate, and patient-centred approaches, and AI provides tools capable of analysing vast datasets, predicting therapeutic outcomes, and optimizing decision-making processes. This thesis explores the application of AI in pharmacy, with a specific focus on its roles in drug discovery and development, personalised medicine predictive analytics, patient centred care, pharmaceutical operations and pharmacy practice. It also examines the challenges surrounding AI adoption, including regulatory, ethical, and data-related concerns. This research used a literature review to gather relevant studies on AI application in pharmacy. The search included articles published between 2015 and 2024, sourced from databases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google scholar. Keywords included Artificial intelligence in pharmacy, AI in drug discovery, personalised medicine. AI has shown measurable benefits in accelerating drug target identification, optimizing clinical trials, and tailoring therapies using genomic data. Notable tools such as DeepMind’s AlphaFold and IBM Watson for Oncology exemplify AI’s potential in reducing development time and supporting personalized treatment. In pharmacy practice, AI-enabled clinical decision support systems (CDSS), chatbots, and computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) have reduced medication errors and improved patient counselling. Nevertheless, concerns persist around data privacy, algorithmic bias, model interpretability, and cost of implementation. AI presents substantial opportunities for enhancing efficiency, safety, and innovation within pharmacy practice. By addressing current challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration and regulatory advancements, AI can further revolutionize pharmaceutical research, development, and patient care, ultimately improving health outcomes and operational efficiency across the sector.