Interview with Pharmacists in digital health space — Whitley Yi and Cheung Christy

Pharmaceutical care is gradually advancing to incorporating technology and young pharmacists also would need to move with this revolution and gain skills to come about innovations to give solutions to contribute to improving quality of life.

We featured two pharmacists doing amazing work in using technological innovation to solve problems.

Thanks, Whitley and Christy for joining us for this interview.

We are very curious to hear which path you took from your first day in pharmacy school to digital health.

● WHITLEY: I have always loved technology and data, but had never realized that I could combine those interests with pharmacy until taking an informatics course in pharmacy school. That was an eye-opening experience for me. From then on, I became interested in how technology and data could be utilized to improve care delivery in every new setting I entered as a student.

I constantly asked “why?” everywhere I went.

I wanted to understand why we didn’t do more to integrate patient data into our electronic health records and why we didn’t always utilize the data we had to better inform our decisions. I used this interest to help shape my other training experiences. In residency at UNC Hospitals, I focused on digital health-related research projects and completed rotations with the informatics and analytics teams. Upon completing residency, I searched for job opportunities in the health tech space and joined the start-up that I’m currently working for now.

● CHRISTY: In my first year of pharmacy school, the only career options that I had been exposed to were community (retail) and hospital practice. What pushed me towards exploring digital health was really a chance encounter with a university advertisement for a healthcare hackathon. “Hatching Health” at the University of British Columbia, where I graduated from, was a weekend during which students and professionals in pharmacy, medicine, nursing, engineering, and design came together to brainstorm solutions for existing healthcare challenges. It was exactly the catalyst that opened my eyes to the intersection of health and technology, and after that, my curiosity for digital health only kept on growing. The start of my career, post-graduation, has been in the biopharmaceuticals space, but I continue to explore digital health on the side as well as within my current role in this industry, and my hope is that in the very near future, I am able to bring these interests of mine together.

As a co-founder of AI collective, can you briefly share what AI collective is all about and the impacts so far?

AI Collective is about empowering other pharmacists to get involved in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The aim is to give pharmacists a place to start. We created an education roadmap, with the goal of translating the vast amount of information that exists on AI into bite-sized sections that clinicians can grasp. Since our launch, we have had the opportunity to guest lecture at pharmacy schools, including at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and speak at other digital health-related webinars and student club forums.

Which is the main challenge today for you? Does something specifically challenge you as a young woman?

As pharmacists, across various practice settings we have been involved in, the main challenge we have encountered as young women may be the need to first establish credibility before our ideas are given serious consideration. In both the biopharmaceutical and health technology startup spaces, we continue to see a gender disproportion in senior management teams and IT/data science teams. In AI, in particular, only 12% of senior-level AI researchers are female and according to the World Economic Forum, only 22% of jobs in AI overall are held by women and even less when looking at senior-level leadership positions. This is why it is so important to continue to work towards increasing women’s representation and participation in these roles.

Which positive health outcomes you and your peers can observe from digital health from your and similar companies?

● WHITLEY: In the US, healthcare is a very fragmented system. One of the biggest impacts I’ve seen from the emergence of digital health companies is a shift in making care more accessible and more engaging. Patients, as consumers, live now in a world where the healthcare system is at odds with every other product and service-oriented industry in their lives. Other companies are making it easier and more convenient to use their services and they are finding ways to fit seamlessly into someone’s life. Services are available on-demand and through whatever channel (phone, web, app, chat, etc) consumers prefer. However, healthcare does not operate that way, making it more challenging and time-consuming to access care, and therefore decreasing the likelihood of people receiving the care they need. Digital health platforms, especially those that serve as digital front doors, are helping bridge that gap and change the way patients interface with the healthcare system.

● CHRISTY: I see an appetite building within the biopharmaceuticals industry in leveraging digital in a variety of ways. Internally, at each company, we might see digital transformation plans aiming to upskill employees from a digital standpoint, enhance the way we work and collaborate with one another, and finally, augment efficiency overall. More importantly, however, for our patients, there are opportunities to personalize healthcare, including earlier disease detection, identifying novel biomarkers, improved clinical trial recruitment, incorporation of digital therapeutics, and increased support throughout the patient care journey. There are efforts all across the board, with many, perhaps, still in proof-of-concept stages; to give you one example, there have been a number of partnerships between pharmaceutical and artificial intelligence-as-a-service companies looking to improve the drug discovery process, but currently, much of this remains in early development phases of a product’s lifecycle. In the not-so-distant future though, we may see these projects developing into tangible results, and potentially clinical benefits, for our patients and the healthcare community.

Do you have a team of pharmacists in your current position? How many pharmaceutical colleagues do you have in this area?

● CHRISTY: I currently work as a Medical Science Liaison (MSL) in Neurology, at Sanofi Genzyme Canada. We have a lean team of three MSLs, all of whom are pharmacists by training, a Post-Pharm.D. fellow, a Medical Advisor, and a Medical Director. I would say that, in the pharmaceutical industry, pharmacists are fairly well represented across various functions, including Medical, Commercial, Regulatory, Health Outcomes, and more. I would encourage more pharmacists to explore the pharmaceutical industry, whether shorter term or as a long-term career; there are so many moving parts, at different levels within the industry, it really is a great place to learn, get broad exposure, and develop diverse skill sets.

● WHITLEY: I am the only pharmacist in my company. It’s exciting to get to work in such a highly diverse and multidisciplinary setting. I learn every day from my colleagues, while also contributing through my unique pharmacy domain subject matter expertise. In general, there are still not many pharmacists working in consumer digital health. I think part of the reason is a lack of awareness among pharmacists that these job opportunities exist.

Additionally, there is a lack of awareness in the health-tech space of what pharmacists can do.

Therefore, pharmacists are not always specifically sought out or listed on job postings, despite how great a fit pharmacists’ skill sets are for these types of roles.

Which other paths can young pharmacists pursue in digital health that differ from yours?

Opportunities in digital health exist, but they are not obvious! We encourage young pharmacists interested in digital health opportunities to pay closer attention to the job descriptions rather than the title of the position itself. Very often, you may find that the role you are looking for will not have ‘pharmacist’ in its title or description for that matter.

If you are looking to join a startup, it may be worthwhile looking for keywords such as product manager, project manager, digital health coach, or customer/patient support services;

however, it also depends on where your expertise, and interests, lie. Within the consumer health space, roles can include clinical informaticist, content creator, data scientist, business development, project manager, operations lead, among many others. Alternative options may be to pursue a digital health fellowship, create your own rotation and/or internship, or volunteer with a company on a project-by-project basis. Switching gears to more of the entrepreneurial side, you could consider entry-level or associate positions at management or strategy consulting firms with a focus on digital health, or market research analyst roles at similar institutions. We hope this is helpful as a good starting point, but of course, it’s always important to research the position and make sure the role is a good fit for you.

What advice would you give for a young pharmacist who wants to pursue a career path in tech?

There are many paths you can take in digital health and the field is evolving so rapidly, so we suggest taking the opportunity to learn as much as you can about the healthcare technology landscape. Challenge yourself to explore at least two different areas while still early in your career. A great place to start is to reach out to companies in the space you are interested in and ask them if you can learn more about what they do; this can give you a better idea of what different roles entail and how you can better position yourself for those types of positions if applying for them in the future. Network, network, network. Some of the best learnings and insights come from conversations with like-minded individuals, peers, and mentors alike. Everyone’s journey in digital health is different but similarly unconventional, so stay curious and remember to ask good questions!

We hope this helped you!