The Pharmacy Industry Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI

Nearly 90% of businesses use AI on a regular basis, according to a 2025 McKinsey report, and pharmacy is no exception.

Pharmacists are already using AI for tasks like proofreading, literature summaries, charting, and clinical decision making—and as AI evolves, so too will the way pharmacies use it.

Yet pharmacists remain cautious. A 2026 JAPha survey found that most pharmacists—77% of survey respondents—were open to using AI but had major concerns when it came to information accuracy (82%), lack of human judgment (79%), and privacy risks (61%).

These concerns show that pharmacy has never been solely about efficiency—even when lines are long and scripts volume is high—but about clinical expertise, patient safety, and positive outcomes.

The question, then, isn’t whether pharmacists should be using AI but how they should be using it.

To dig deeper, we sat down with Melanie Christie, President of Pharmacy Systems at RedSail, to talk all things AI in pharmacy.

“It’s easy to get caught up in what AI can do,” says Melanie. “The more important question is what outcomes we’re trying to achieve and how technologies like AI can help us get there.”

What we found was clear: The most successful pharmacies won’t be the most enthusiastic adopters of AI—the ones cutting staff hours and replacing real interactions with chatbots—but the ones who use AI to help pharmacists free up their time to practice to the top of their license.

In this blog, we explore where AI can support pharmacy practice, where it should be avoided, and how you can adopt new technology without losing the personal touch that sets you apart in the industry.

How Should AI Be Used in the Pharmacy?

If there was one theme that emerged from our conversation with Melanie, it was this: AI works best when it helps pharmacists spend more time being pharmacists.

“We’re at our best when technology puts pharmacists front and center,” says Melanie. “AI should support pharmacists by reducing repetitive work and giving them more time to spend with patients.”

Because patients interact with pharmacists so frequently, they often develop stronger patient-provider relationships. They ask questions they might not ask elsewhere, seek guidance between appointments, and rely on pharmacists as a constant source of healthcare information.

Research shows those relationships lead to better adherence, improved health outcomes, and lower healthcare costs.

Despite all its advances, AI can’t provide the kinds of patient-provider relationships that make pharmacies so critical to healthcare.

No chatbot, automated phone tree, or AI assistant can replace the reassurance of speaking with a pharmacist who knows a patient's history, remembers previous conversations, and understands the context behind their care.

Rather than replicating patient-provider relationships, then, AI should be used to free up time for those relationships.

As Melanie explains, “The purpose of AI should be to enhance, rather than replace, human connection. The right tools can help pharmacists do what they were trained to do, rather than take away from their roles.”

Where Should AI Be Used in the Pharmacy?

If AI belongs anywhere in pharmacy, it belongs in the tasks that take pharmacists away from patients.

According to one study, pharmacists spend a third of their day completing administrative tasks—from managing claims to handling prior authorizations to managing inventory and filing reports.

Every minute spent on admin, of course, is a minute not spent counseling a patient, answering a question, or catching a medication-related issue before it becomes a bigger problem.

In fact, researchers found that the administrative burden placed on pharmacists leaves so little time for patient interaction that therapeutic management becomes “non-viable.”

AI, it seems, has a solution.

Rather than replacing pharmacists, AI can handle their routine or otherwise repetitive tasks and make space for human connection.

In practice, this this might mean:

• Data entry: AI can transcribe electronic, faxed, or handwritten scripts into the pharmacy management system.
• Prior authorization: AI can automate insurance eligibility checks, refill requests, and other administrative workflow that eat up staff time.
• Workflow triage: AI can sort incoming requests, identify priorities, and route tasks to the appropriate team members to reduce bottlenecks.
• Drug interaction screenings: AI can complete initial drug interaction, allergy, and contraindication checks.
• Demand forecasting: AI can predict trends to maintain optimal stock levels and prevent drug shortages.

RedSail—and its respective PMS systems—offers a number of tools that support AI, automation, and other technologies that give pharmacists their time back.

SmartFax, for example, is an AI-powered tool that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read incoming digital faxes, route documents straight to the fill queue, and reduce manual sorting errors for PioneerRx users.

RxCash+ is a data-driven cash pricing tool that uses tailored pricing algorithms to help pharmacists identify a fair cash price and earn, on average, an extra $2-4K revenue every month.

A new data entry automation tool is also in the works to streamline scripts and give techs back large chunks of time. No matter the technology, though, all RedSail technologies must help, rather than hinder, pharmacy teams.

Melanie offers us a look behind the curtain: “At RedSail, every new feature has to pass the same test: Does it help pharmacies deliver better care? AI should solve real problems, reduce real administrative burdens, and help pharmacists service real patients. That’s what we’re all about.”

Where Should AI Be Avoided?

As much as AI can be a help to pharmacy practice, it isn’t a silver bullet.

News headlines show all the ways in which AI can go sour—from the controversy surrounding Amazon’s new Health AI Chatbot to accusations of AI-generated public policy recommendations to patient complaints of inefficient AI assistants that hinder, rather than help, pharmacies.

As a general rule of thumb, the more a task depends on clinical expertise, patient context, or human trust, the less it should be delegated to AI.

This includes:

• Final medication verification: AI can flag potential issues, but it should never have the final say on a medication recommendation. Pharmacists should always review dosage, interactions, contraindications, and high-risk medications before dispensing.
• Prescribing recommendations: AI can summarize guidelines, but pharmacists should never rely exclusively on AI-generated recommendations. Clinical decisions should always be made with professional judgment in mind.
• Clinical judgment calls: AI doesn't see the whole patient. It can't fully account for factors like patient preferences, adherence concerns, financial barriers, or other real-world factors that influence treatment decisions.
• Sensitive information: Whether discussing adverse effects, medication risks, or treatment changes, patients deserve a human conversation. AI can prepare information but shouldn't replace pharmacist counseling.
• Clinical evidence: AI-generated summaries can be a useful starting point for research, but they should never be treated as evidence themselves. Research, citations, and supporting data should always be verified through original sources.

Ultimately, AI is designed to process information. Pharmacists are trained to interpret it.

For more information on responsible AI use, visit the World Health Organization (WHO)’s guidance on Ethics & Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health.

Some Tips for Staying Personal While Using AI

As we’ve discussed, AI can be helpful for your pharmacy practice—if it’s used thoughtfully, responsibly, and with patient engagement in mind.

Here are a few final tips to help you find the best of both worlds:

What to do:

• Reclaim your time: If AI saves you ten minutes, spend those ten minutes talking to patients, answering questions, or providing counseling instead of simply increasing volume.
• Get to know your patients better: Use your RedSail PMS to quickly review patient notes, medication history, and preferences before an interaction.
• Edit everything in your voice: AI-generated emails, texts, and reminders should be a first draft, not a final draft. Patients should feel like they're hearing from you, not a run-of-the-mill AI template.
• Use AI to start conversations, not replace them: When AI provides you with insights on a patient, use those insights to offer a quick call, send a message, or make a note for future interactions.
• Train your team on AI boundaries: Make sure staff understand what AI can help with and what always requires human judgment.

What not to do:

• Lose the human connection: Patients shouldn’t feel like they’re talking to a machine. Make sure to balance automation with opportunities for real conversation.
• Send AI messages without review: Even accurate information can sound impersonal, confusing, or untrustworthy if it isn’t reviewed by a member of your team. How you communicate matters just as much as what you communicate.
• Assume AI understands patient context: AI can never understand a patient like a pharmacist can. Use personal connection to fill in the gaps that patient data can give you.
• Treat AI recommendations as fact: AI can identify patterns and provide suggestions, but pharmacists are still responsible for clinical decisions.
• Chase efficiency at the expense of care: Your goal shouldn’t just be to process more prescriptions but to create more meaningful patient interactions.

The bottom line is that the best pharmacies aren’t the ones that use the most AI but the ones who use AI the best.

That is to say, the ones who use AI to be more informed, more intentional, and better connected with the patients they see every day.

Conclusion

AI may be changing pharmacy, but it isn't changing what patients need from their pharmacists.

As AI becomes more common in pharmacy practice, it’s important to remember what it can and can’t do. It can help increase efficiency, improve accuracy, and free up time for connection. It can’t replace the clinical judgment and human connection that keeps patients coming back.

How should pharmacists be using AI? The answer is simple.

When AI helps pharmacists spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients, everyone wins. When it becomes a barrier between pharmacists and the people they serve, it solves the wrong problem.

As it stands, AI should be a means rather than an end. That means is—as it always has been and always will be—serving patients.

“AI will continue to evolve, but the purpose of pharmacy hasn’t changed,” Melanie says. “Our responsibility is still to serve our patients, and every piece of technology we use should support that goal. Everything begins and ends there.”

To learn more about RedSail PMS products and how we implement AI in our technology, click here.