Today, ASHP announced the appointment of the new Section of Digital and Telehealth Practitioners Executive Committee. The section offers a membership home for pharmacists, student pharmacists, pharmacy residents, and pharmacy technicians who are currently practicing in or aspire to practice in telehealth and virtual care settings where artificial intelligence, other current and emerging digital healthcare technologies, and data are being utilized for the betterment of patient care.
“Advances in data utilization and digital health technologies, including artificial intelligence, are rapidly changing pharmacy practice and healthcare delivery,” said ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz, PharmD, ScD (Hon), FASHP. “ASHP is pleased to engage an absolutely exceptional group of pharmacy leaders and innovators in digital health to help ASHP shape the future of this important area.”
The executive committee, composed of five ASHP members recognized as pharmacy leaders with broad and diverse practice expertise, will guide the development of education, resources, strategic initiatives, professional policies, and advocacy to support digital innovation.
The Section of Digital and Telehealth Practitioners Executive Committee members for the 2024-2025 term are as follows:
- Chair: Lisa Stump, MS, FASHP is chief information and digital transformation officer at Yale New Haven Health and the Yale Aligned Clinician Enterprise where she leads the strategic planning, development, implementation, and adoption of digital initiatives across the enterprise. With over 25 years of experience in healthcare, she has led the implementation of many clinical, financial, and business systems and partnered with new and innovative companies to develop new solutions.
- Member: Kathryn R. Brown, PharmD, MHA is the senior vice president and chief operating officer for Kaiser Permanente Pharmacy Services, including national inpatient and outpatient pharmacy, home infusion, call center, and clinical services, that incorporate IT, digital, and technology to better service patient care. Brown has expertise in local, regional, and national healthcare issues, policy, and regulatory review as well as technology and business development.
- Member: Susan Flaker, PharmD, MBA, DPLA is the regional director of pharmacy for the Southeast Minnesota region of the Mayo Clinic Health System. Flaker began her career at Barnes Jewish Hospital where she assisted in the implementation of the electronic health record and other technologies. At the Mayo Clinic, she leads a group to study the use of augmented intelligence to assist with order verification.
- Member: Scott Nelson, PharmD, MS, ACHIP, FAMIA is a pharmacist and associate professor in the department of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Nelson is the director of the Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics online program and currently works in medication safety informatics in HealthIT. His domain expertise includes clinical decision support, medication reconciliation, e-prescribing, artificial intelligence, knowledge management, medication standards and terminologies, and immunizations.
- Member: Addison Ragan, PharmD, BCPS is the pharmacy program manager for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Clinical Resource Hub (CRH). Ragan champions the role of the clinical pharmacist practitioner (CPP) within the VA’s enterprise-wide hub and spoke telehealth care model and serves on the VA National Clinical Pharmacy Advisory Board and VA National Clinical Pharmacy Practice Council. She has led efforts to integrate the CPP into CRH virtual telehealth and teams across multiple care areas and developed policy and guidance to integrate health professional trainees into the virtual training model.
The executive committee will hold its first in-person meeting in February at ASHP’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. Additional volunteer engagement opportunities in the new section will be available to all ASHP members in the coming months.
For more information about the new ASHP Section of Digital and Telehealth Practitioners, visit ashp.org/sdtp.
