Trends

A number of important and impactful trends are converging to increase the urgent need for new solutions to medication management:

Increasing Shortage of Pharmacists
At the same time prescription volume continues to rise and drugstore chains continue to rapidly expand into new markets, the supply of pharmacists has not kept pace with the growing workload. So, what is needed is a method by which to improve the productivity and efficiency of existing pharmacists.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores estimates that there are approximately 4,000 pharmacist vacancies throughout the country, with approximately 12% of all retail pharmacies reporting a need for additional pharmacy staff.

Aging of the Population
The percentage of the population that is over 65 years of age has grown steadily from roughly 9.2% in 1960 to 12.5% in 2000.

This rapidly growing segment of the population consumes more than one-third of all prescriptions.

Pipeline of New Drugs
Technology advances, such as genomics, high throughput screening, and combinatorial chemistry, have rationalized the drug discovery process and enabled pharmaceutical companies to identify an increasing number of lead compounds. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry’s drug development pipeline has become quite robust and is expected to accelerate the trend toward increased pharmaceutical therapy.

Increasing Drug Costs
Prescription drug costs are the fastest growing component of health care costs in the United States. However, pharmaceutical therapy is still the most cost-effective treatment available, and is preferred by patients as well as providers.

The U.S. Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) estimates that pharmaceutical expenditures currently account for approximately $65 billion of U.S. health care spending and are expected to increase to over $110 billion by 2007.