Pharmacies Need an Intelligence Layer

By Sarah Willson and Eunice Wu

If you have ever waited in a long line at the pharmacy, you have experienced firsthand the delays caused by the outdated and overburdened system that pharmacists navigate daily. 

Pharmacies worldwide are struggling to keep up, facing staff shortages, burnout, and outdated systems. Pharmacies are handling an increasing number of prescription requests each day, with prescription volumes reaching 7.1 billion last year alone, a nearly 1 billion increase from 2019. 

The aging population is intensifying prescription-related challenges, not just in terms of volume, but also in the complexity of medication reviews and potential interactions. By 2030, 1 in 5 people in North America will be over 65. Of this demographic, 90% will take at least one medication, and 54% will manage four or more prescriptions that pharmacists will need to assess for potential interactions. As prescription complexity increases, so does the risk of medication-related errors, especially in high-pressure environments. These errors already cost the global healthcare system an estimated $42 billion annually and are expected to rise without intervention.

Pharmacists are already struggling to keep up, and recent legislation across North America has expanded their responsibilities to include prescribing medications, further adding to their workload. This pressure is only expected to intensify as just 8,000 PharmD graduates are projected to meet the demand for 13,400 new pharmacist positions next year in the US. 

The strain on today’s pharmacy system is producing measurable harms across the industry. Overloaded pharmacists mean longer wait times, medication errors, rushed patient counseling, and missed opportunities for preventative care. 

Major retail chains such as Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart have cut pharmacy hours at a sizable portion of their locations - Walgreens closed around one-third of its 9,000 stores temporarily, and others have followed suit to adjust to severe staff shortages. 

Amid these industry-wide challenges, some innovators are tackling the problem head-on.

Eunice Wu, CEO of Asepha AI, didn’t just observe the inefficiencies plaguing the pharmacy system - she lived them. As a pharmacist herself, she experienced the frustrating, outdated workflows and overwhelming demands of the role. Her lived experience is what inspired her to build Asepha AI and reimagine what pharmacy could look like with intelligent automation at its core. Can Uncu, Asepha’s CTO, left his role at AMD to build AI models purpose-built for patient safety. He saw that general-purpose models weren’t equipped to meet the clinical standards required in healthcare, so he set out to develop models that could be safely deployed at the pharmacy counter, where precision isn’t optional.

Asepha is building an AI-powered intelligence layer for pharmacies, designed to take on the clinical tasks that slow pharmacies down and add cognitive load to an already overstretched system. Rather than relying on pharmacists to manually process prescriptions, Asepha automates the workflow from intake to clinical assessment.

When a prescription is received, whether typed or in messy handwriting, Asepha captures it, extracts key data points such as drug name, dosage, route, and frequency using its OCR and natural language processing engine, and enters that information directly into the pharmacy’s existing systems. A task that used to take several minutes is completed in seconds.

Asepha’s platform also performs clinical medication reviews. For patients on multiple prescriptions, Asepha automatically runs a comprehensive analysis to flag drug interactions, duplications, dosage issues, and other safety concerns. It then generates actionable recommendations for the pharmacist to review. 

On Asepha AI’s future, Wu explains, “These tools will eventually be interconnected across all aspects of pharmacy, from data transfer to how care, decisions, and prescriptions are communicated.”

The pharmacy system of the future will not be powered by paper, fax machines, and manual reviews. It will run on intelligent systems that process prescriptions instantly, deliver proactive clinical assessments, and support pharmacists in real time with evidence-based recommendations. By eliminating administrative bottlenecks, Asepha allows pharmacists to focus on delivering enhanced, personalized care to patients. Asepha is not just streamlining outdated processes - it is creating the foundational layer of intelligence that will underpin the pharmacy systems of the future.