Pharmacy is the backbone of the healthcare system and provides health services to all populations within the country. The pharmacy works through the systemic network which spreads among both rural as well as urban population of the country. The strong network of pharmacy indicates the countries health system. The pharmacist who is the pillar of pharmacy not just compounding and dispensing the medicines but now pharmacist role has been advanced. The role of pharmacist is now challenging and tasking because currently they are more involved in clinical practices. The pharmacist gives information about drugs, drug regimen, adverse effects of drugs drug interaction to the patients and also offer pharma covigilence services.
Despite the large network of pharmacy, still the health care systems of countries not improving especially the developing countries like India. The lacunae of the current health care systems is that today still the all facilities of the pharmacy is not reached to every individual of the country. The two main reasons behind this that either the decrease in pharmacies and the number of pharmacist or lack of awareness and facilities in patients so that they are not in contact with the pharmacist directly. This lacuna of healthcare system in developing countries particularly in India can be overcome by the introduction of telepharmacy. The advancement of technologies in areas of electronic information and communication give rise to a new branch of pharmacy that is telepharmacy.
Telepharmacy lies under telehealth provide remote health care facilities, monitoring diagnosis, clinical and nonclinical, health education and other facilities related to patient health. The advancement of technologies especially in areas of communication helps to deliver the all facilities of healthcare to the patients who are not directly in contact with pharmacist service through telecommunication, video conferencing, Skype and zoom meeting.
The importance of telepharmacy is suddenly increased in all over the world during the COVID19 pandemic and still increasing especially in the developing countries like india. The pharmacists delivered the health care facilities through telecommunications,What’s App and other social networking platforms and provide the right medicine to the patients during the pandemic. The low number of doctors and less frequent availability of doctors since the time of pendemic, pharmacist served as a bridge between physician and patients. Telepharmacy becomes an important tool to deliver all health care facilities equally in the developing countries especially in India since the pandemic. The health care status of the developing countries especially in India now increasing with the discovery of this new branch of pharmacy ie telelepharmacy. India needs telepharmacy because most of populations reside in rural areas where physicians are not easily available so telepharmacy make the bridge between physicians and patients. The demand and need of telepharmacy is increasing day by day, so the telepharmacy now become a future pharmacy to upgrade the healthcare system of India. To become more prevalent and more successful of telepharmacy in India government should trained pharmacist about the current technologies of telecommunications so that pharmacist can be well skilled in their profession. In addition, to run telepharmacy successfully government should focus on digital education of society and provide all digital facility to every individual of the country so that every person of the country can avail telepharmacy facility