This week, members of the Infinitus team attended the NASP Annual Meeting in Nashville. The conference brings together leaders from across the specialty pharmacy sector to explore trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry.

While each annual meeting offers valuable insights, this year there was a notable emphasis on artificial intelligence. Numerous sessions and booths were dedicated to exploring AI’s transformative impact on the specialty pharmacy landscape.

While our team couldn’t attend every session or visit every booth, we did identify five key considerations around AI that emerged from sessions, exhibits, and discussions. We’ve laid them out below:

1. AI is top of mind in specialty pharmacy 

When there’s not enough human capital to go around, specialty pharmacies must do more with less. AI represents a modern way to transform the patient experience while making it more transparent. 

Earlier this year, we surveyed leaders to gauge their experiences and attitudes toward the hurdles facing patient support. We found that over 86% of the organizations are prioritizing process improvements. But evaluating possible AI solutions isn’t far behind as a strategy, with over 69% of respondents looking into whether AI is a viable answer. A major goal? To serve more patients with fewer resources.

Specialty pharmacies can do more with less by augmenting (but not eliminating) the many manual and administrative steps of the patient journey such as verifying pharmacy benefits, and prescription transfers and follow ups. Specialty pharmacies are in a unique position to excel at AI integration, especially when paired with the fact that innovation and entrepreneurship thrive in the specialty pharmacy landscape.

A photo of the panel "The Role of AI in the Modern Specialty Pharmacy" that took place at the NASP Annual Meeting.

2. Specialty Pharmacy is already doing super cool things with AI 

How can specialty pharmacies start augmenting their workflow with AI? While many think a massive undertaking is needed, it’s really about starting with a well-defined, high-impact problem that can be solved with a relatively simple AI application.

Here are some ways NASP speakers and sponsors shared they can – and often already do – leverage AI to impact the patient journey: 

  • Streamlining communications
  • Medication delivery scheduling
  • Enhancing customer service
  • Pharmacist education
  • Benefit verification 
  • Navigating IVR and hold times
  • Drug utilization review
  • Prior authorization
  • Copay assistance
  • Real-time sentiment analysis

AI has historically been all about cost reduction. But the true promise of new technology is opening up new possibilities, not just optimizing what already exists.

3. AI challenges still remain

From regulatory constraints to ethical considerations to cost, integrating AI brings challenges. In the clinical realm, many providers fear messing up (FOMU), or even losing their licenses; no one can afford to risk AI hallucinations while serving patients. Additionally, operational teams don’t have an army of data scientists and AI experts at their disposal, so time and resources can be lost to finding and working with an outside partner. What’s more, there’s a general lack of understanding around AI and use cases of how to apply it in specialty pharmacy. 

Top of mind is ensuring patient privacy and data security. Any solution must be HIPAA and SOC II compliant, and continuously work to avoid bias. Just the very nature of data in specialty pharmacy brings its own issues. Data exists in multiple places in different formats and is often redundant, outdated, and conflicting.

So then how can specialty pharmacies meet these challenges head-on? Some suggestions made during the conference included:

  • Using synthetic data or simulated environments
  • Leading with education and training
  • Assessing prospective AI vendors to ensure you’re in a position to gain buy-in from colleagues
Rachel Clifton of Infinitus gives a talk at the NASP Annual Meeting called "The Patient Support Program of the Future."

4. Evaluating AI technology is serious business

When developing a framework for AI, experts at NASP had resounding advice: Define the problem first. Don’t start with an AI strategy; rather, articulate the problem you want to solve with AI. Understand the context, challenges, and desired outcomes. Spoiler alert: Be weary of AI that’s a black box; almost all solutions will need to be customized. 

As shared during the conference, here are the pillars to finding safe and effective AI solutions in specialty pharmacy: 

  • Compliance: If the vendor doesn’t detail whether and how its solution is HIPAA- and SOC II-compliant, and how they’re continuously working to avoid bias, the conversation with that vendor should probably end.
  • Safety: Are there human-in-the loop guardrails to continuously evaluate performance? What metrics are tracked and how continuously are they tracked? If the solution uses generative AI, what guardrails are in place to reduce the rate of hallucinations?
  • Ethics: It’s important for AI tools to be free of bias. It’s extremely important that any solution that uses AI engages in regular bias testing. You’ll want to understand what kind of review processes are in place and how inaccuracies and potential bias are corrected.
  • Testing: Can you run a pilot to identify potential issues and gather feedback? 
  • Timely AI implementation: Quick realization of benefits and insights, and minimization of operational disruption, is crucial. 
  • Change management: In healthcare and life sciences, where there is a long-standing culture of highly tested, methodical change, the pace of innovation in AI technology can create resistance.

In almost all cases, specialty pharmacies will benefit from working with external partners – they’re better resourced with talent and infrastructure, and should be able to scale as your needs grow and change. 

5. AI is at its best when it’s helping humans – not replacing them

What won’t AI do? Completely replace a provider or manufacturer’s workforce.

AI agents in particular are perfect for helping busy healthcare professionals save time, agreed thought leaders at the conference, by taking over time-consuming, monotonous responsibilities. From making phone calls to verify benefits to following up on prior authorizations, hundreds of thousands of hours can be unlocked for providers, freeing them to spend their time where it matters most: helping patients. 

But as advanced as AI is, it’s far from perfect and mistakes happen. Keeping humans in the loop is critical not only to serve as guardrails, but also to improve automation. For instance, when AI agents (for example, at Infinitus) encounter uncertainty, they can raise a digital “hand” to have a human reviewer jump in. The data that results from that human’s review is in turn used to help the model refine its abilities, and “learn” how to handle similar scenarios in the future.

It’s not about AI replacing humans; it’s about AI and humans coming together to create something greater than the sum of their individual parts. Whether you’re in the early stages of exploring AI possibilities or have already initiated implementation, our guide Separating AI fact from fiction shares the unique challenges healthcare leaders encounter and a roadmap for confidently integrating AI into your strategic plans. Or, if you’re looking to see firsthand how AI can transform your specialty pharmacy, contact us for a meeting today.