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Digital Health and Telepharmacy: Transforming Patient-Centered Pharmacy Services-A Scenario-Based Microsimulation Study
Subject area: Biological & Medical Sciences · Area of research: Pharmacy
Abstract
Digital health and telepharmacy may extend pharmacists’ capacity to provide medication review, counselling, adherence support and follow-up beyond conventional face-to-face settings. However, the effects of implementation depend on service design, access, digital capability and the clinical context. A transparent scenario-based model can illustrate how plausible changes in service delivery assumptions translate into population-level outcomes, while making clear that model outputs are not observed effects. To construct a reproducible microsimulation comparing a hypothetical usual-care pathway with a hypothetical telepharmacy-enabled pathway for adults with long-term conditions, and to quantify the consequences of prespecified assumptions for medication adherence, drug-related problems, missed follow-up and patient satisfaction. A two-strategy microsimulation generated 10,000 virtual patient records (5,000 per strategy) using a fixed random seed. The model assigned identical broad population profiles and specified outcome probabilities of 0.60 versus 0.68 for adherence, 0.18 versus 0.14 for at least one drug-related problem, 0.25 versus 0.16 for missed follow-up, and 0.65 versus 0.78 for high satisfaction in usual care and telepharmacy scenarios, respectively. These are analyst-selected illustrative assumptions, not estimates extracted from an empirical cohort. Binary outcomes were sampled from Bernoulli distributions. Absolute risk differences and approximate 95% confidence intervals were calculated; one-way sensitivity analysis varied the assumed adherence uplift from 2 to 12 percentage points. In this fixed-seed illustrative run, simulated proportions were: medication adherence 60.4% versus 66.9%, drug-related problems 17.4% versus 13.9%, missed follow-up 25.3% versus 16.4%, and high satisfaction 63.6% versus 78.7%, for usual care and telepharmacy scenarios, respectively. Because outcome probabilities were specified by the analyst, these contrasts demonstrate model mechanics and do not estimate causal treatment effects. The model provides a transparent framework for exploring how assumed telepharmacy service effects could influence care-process outcomes. Its value is methodological and educational; policy or clinical decisions require parameterisation with locally relevant empirical data, validation, uncertainty analysis and prospective evaluation.
Keywords
digital health, telepharmacy, pharmacy practice, microsimulation, medication adherence, patient-centered care, scenario analysis
References
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How to cite this paper
@article{1724892,
author = {Dr. Mohana Priya Pamidi, Dr. K. Venkata Gopaiah},
title = {Digital Health and Telepharmacy: Transforming Patient-Centered Pharmacy Services-A Scenario-Based Microsimulation Study},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {5},
pages = {2186-2195},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724892.pdf},
abstract = {Digital health and telepharmacy may extend pharmacists’ capacity to provide medication review, counselling, adherence support and follow-up beyond conventional face-to-face settings. However, the effects of implementation depend on service design, access, digital capability and the clinical context. A transparent scenario-based model can illustrate how plausible changes in service delivery assumptions translate into population-level outcomes, while making clear that model outputs are not observed effects.
To construct a reproducible microsimulation comparing a hypothetical usual-care pathway with a hypothetical telepharmacy-enabled pathway for adults with long-term conditions, and to quantify the consequences of prespecified assumptions for medication adherence, drug-related problems, missed follow-up and patient satisfaction.
A two-strategy microsimulation generated 10,000 virtual patient records (5,000 per strategy) using a fixed random seed. The model assigned identical broad population profiles and specified outcome probabilities of 0.60 versus 0.68 for adherence, 0.18 versus 0.14 for at least one drug-related problem, 0.25 versus 0.16 for missed follow-up, and 0.65 versus 0.78 for high satisfaction in usual care and telepharmacy scenarios, respectively. These are analyst-selected illustrative assumptions, not estimates extracted from an empirical cohort. Binary outcomes were sampled from Bernoulli distributions. Absolute risk differences and approximate 95% confidence intervals were calculated; one-way sensitivity analysis varied the assumed adherence uplift from 2 to 12 percentage points.
In this fixed-seed illustrative run, simulated proportions were: medication adherence 60.4% versus 66.9%, drug-related problems 17.4% versus 13.9%, missed follow-up 25.3% versus 16.4%, and high satisfaction 63.6% versus 78.7%, for usual care and telepharmacy scenarios, respectively. Because outcome probabilities were specified by the analyst, these contrasts demonstrate model mechanics and do not estimate causal treatment effects.
The model provides a transparent framework for exploring how assumed telepharmacy service effects could influence care-process outcomes. Its value is methodological and educational; policy or clinical decisions require parameterisation with locally relevant empirical data, validation, uncertainty analysis and prospective evaluation.},
keywords = {digital health, telepharmacy, pharmacy practice, microsimulation, medication adherence, patient-centered care, scenario analysis},
month = {November},
}