Application, Benefits, and Limitations of Telepharmacy for Patients with Diabetes in the Outpatient Setting

Abstract

After the COVID-19 pandemic, telepharmacy has become increasingly widely used as an alternative to pharmaceutical care by remote pharmacists. Patients with diabetes mellitus are one of the patients who get benefit the most from telepharmacy practices, which allow patients to consult without meeting face to face and minimize the risk of virus transmission. The authors conduct an assessment of the benefits and limitations of using telepharmacy that are used throughout the world and then hopes that they can become a reference in the development of telepharmacy in the future. A total of 23 relevant articles were used for analysis in this narrative review after searching for articles in three sources, including PubMed, Google Scholar and ClinicalTrials.gov, until October 2022. This narrative review shows that telepharmacy plays an important role in improving clinical outcomes, patient therapy adherence and reduce the number of patient visit and hospitalization, but telepharmacy also has limitations in its use related to security and privacy, as well as pharmacist intervention that has not been maximized. However, telepharmacy has great potential to facilitate diabetes mellitus patients in pharmaceutical services.

Evaluation of Patient Experience with a Model of Coordinated Telematic Pharmaceutical Care Between Hospital and Rural Pharmacies in Spain [Letter]

“…5 In addition, the CMO model should pay attention to the critical needs that support pharmacists in maintaining their knowledge of modern telepharmaceutical procedures and their expertise in offering pharmaceutical services so that patients feel safe during consultations and can ultimately improve presence of pharmacists as qualified health workers. 4 In conclusion, we agree that telepharmacy with the CMO-PC model has improved patient experience, patient satisfaction, and offers other advantages over traditional models, which are tailored to patient needs. 1 However, we recommend that in the future this telepharmacy can be developed by adding several steps to ensure that the use of…”

“…Another limitation is that telepharmacy is more vulnerable to privacy and security risks, telepharmacy providers must be responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance, patient confidentiality and system security at all times. 4 The study conducted by Ramón Morillo-Verdugo et al used a prospective cohort study of outpatients receiving telepharmacy based on CMO-based pharmaceutical care where each patient was followed for 48 weeks on face-to-face and telematics visits, scheduled and unscheduled at the patient's request. 1 This method is already able to measure the effectiveness of the CMO model, however we recommend proceeding to the post-hoc analysis to find out to what extent higher levels of understanding of telepharmaceutical services are seen among patients with higher education levels compared to primary and secondary levels in service cases related to therapy side effects.…”

“…This is useful for facilitating communication between pharmacists and patients as well as being a strong, safe, and needs-based telepharmaceutical platform whose benefits can be felt directly by patients. 4…”

The interface between multidisciplinary learning and digital transformation: Insights in higher education and healthcare in the 2021 century

“…Evidence shows that, in this period, telehealth in oncology with a multidisciplinary team led to effective and sustainable care models (PATERSON et al, 2020). And telepharmacy provided an improvement in the quality of medication use in terms of adherence to patient treatment (IFTINAN et al, 2023). These experiences have as an example the multidisciplinary care as a factor of quality of the Stroke services in the longterm support to the survivors (CLARKE;Forster, 2015).…”

Community Pharmacists’ Knowledge and Perception towards Telepharmacy Services and Willingness to Practice It in Light of COVID-19

“…Before the health crisis, virtual care services underwent a gradual upsurge to provide pharmaceutical care services to patients in remote areas with limited healthcare accessibility and facilities. However, due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there was increased adoption of telehealth, where patients communicate with the healthcare providers remotely for their healthcare needs and concerns by using technology [1][2][3]. One area that comes under the umbrella of telehealth is telepharmacy, in which pharmacists provide patient care activities that improve the patients' safety and quality of life by reducing medication errors, adverse drug events, and reduced healthcare costs [2,4,5].…”