Pharmacists at the Center: Public Health, AI & the New Pharmacy Model | TWIRx

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Health care innovation moves quickly, but innovation is only valuable when clinicians can trust the information behind it. That is where FDB or First Databank makes the difference.

FDB provides trusted, clinically validated medication knowledge and clinical decision support designed for integration into modern health care technology. From electronic health records and pharmacy systems to e-prescribing networks, artificial intelligence, payer platforms, and patient-facing solutions, FDB helps turn complex drug data into actionable guidance.

FDB is also advancing the future of medication intelligence by enabling AI-powered workflows to draw from reliable, expert curated clinical content, helping technology move beyond information towards safer, more useful action. For pharmacists and clinicians, that means more relevant medication alerts, stronger clinical decision support, improved reconciliation, clearer patient instructions, and information that fits naturally into the workflow. For healthcare technology companies, it means access to proven drug knowledge that can strengthen products, support responsible innovation, and improve the decisions made at every point of care. Learn how FDB is connecting trusted drug knowledge, intelligent technology, and patient-centered care. Visit fdbhealth.com. First Databank, powering the medication decisions that move healthcare forward every single day worldwide.

SPEAKER_2 (1:34)

You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.

Todd (2:12)

I'm pinching myself because I get an opportunity to interview a superstar that you may not know as a Pharmacy Podcast listener and listening to TWIRx week after week.

Dr. Alex Adams, PharmD, Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, the ACF, and I have a Pennsylvania, my own state leadership here, Dr. Robert Maher, PharmD. He's the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Care Network. Gentlemen, welcome to TWIRx.

Alex J. Adams (2:46)

Glad to be here.

Robert Maher (2:47)

Thanks for having me here. Thank you, Todd.

Todd (2:50)

All right, we got to get this out of the way, Alex. Just the softball question before we start drilling you with some hard stuff, and that is, why did you want to become a pharmacist in the first place?

Alex J. Adams (3:00)

Well, it kind of followed the family profession. Dad was a pharmacist, grandpa was a pharmacist, great grandpa was a pharmacist. So I was born to be a fourth generation pharmacist. I joked that my blood type was Rx positive.

I married a pharmacist and we had a future pharmacist that we're raising. So it really followed the family business. And I believe deeply in what pharmacists, especially in community settings, can do. I will say, prior to graduation, I got probably more interest in the policy side of the profession. And I found every pharmacy speech has the same elements. We're the most accessible health care professionals. We're among the most trusted health care professionals. But we're the most underutilized professionals. And I don't know that I ever had the patience to stick around hoping that somebody would recognize our potential and utilize us. I wanted to knock those doors down. So I didn't pivot early in my career to the policy side of the profession.

Todd (4:08)

Yeah. And you really jumped in and dug in deep with Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare as their director. Talk to us about the inception of that and then where that led you next.

Alex J. Adams (4:23)

Well, as I said, I married a pharmacist. My wife is an Idaho pharmacist that she used to work at APHA and AACP. So kind of the alphabet soup of a pharmacy family here.

When we decided we wanted to have a family, looked at moving back to Idaho, which is where she's from, and the skies opened up from the heavens. Around that time, we were talking about moving back to Idaho. The executive director of the Idaho Board of Pharmacy position opened up. So I applied and was fortunate to get that.

As I said, I never was one for patients. So I said, well, if I'm going to do this, and I'm going to move across the country, and I'm going to take the Board of Pharmacy position, I want to be the state everybody looks at with envy. Before that, frankly, we had to look at Canada with envy, Alberta, Canada, of all places, pharmacists had independent prescriptive authority. They had the ability to adapt prescriptions. And, you know, I remember one time presenting at the University of Pittsburgh at telling the graduates, if you want to practice at the top of your education, the top of your training, you got to go to Alberta, Canada, of all places. And I wanted there to be a place in the US that would rival that, and frankly, I wanted to go further than Alberta. So when I started at the Board of Pharmacy, we started with about 100 pages of regulations, and when I ended, we get it down to like 20-ish or so pages of regulations. We got rid of all the ticky-tacky stuff of how hot your hot water has to be, how much light has to get to the back of your counters, what type of doors and hinges you have to have. But more importantly, we created breathing room for prescribing, and it was a very iterative process. Initially, when I started, I started taking packages to our legislature where we would allow pharmacists to prescribe for very discreet things like naloxone and tobacco cessation products and tuberculosis skin tests and things like that. And it just, it wasn't sustainable. Each one of them, you had to run a bill, each one of them was opposed by other professions. Each one of them, you then had to lard up with training requirements on TB skin tests and annual continuing education requirements and all of that. It just wasn't sustainable. I think the thing that really changed the trajectory was when we ran the Tobacco Cessation Prescribing Bill, you had a physician get up to oppose it, who basically argued, and I'm saying basically argued, was it was safer to smoke than it was for pharmacists to help people stop smoking. It was such a disingenuous argument and so shrill that the legislature said, let's get out of this business and let's just give pharmacists broader prescriptive authority.