The Department of Pharmaceutical Care and Health Systems (PCHS) advances the practice of pharmaceutical care and its role in the health care system for the benefit of patients and society through education, research and service. Faculty and trainees within our department study the pharmacy profession, patient care behaviors, government policies, and the economic, clinical, and humanistic aspects of medications.
Patient Care Research
PCHS is dedicated to deliver pharmaceutical care in innovative and impactful ways. Practice faculty within PCHS lead innovations for delivery of high quality patient centered care and conduct scholarship that impacts the practice of pharmacy and team-based patient care delivery.
Pharmaceuticals & Public Policy
The widespread use and dependency on drugs and drug products in today's society, coupled with an increased utilization and application of pharmaceutical services, has created a need for individuals who can study the social, psychosocial, political, legal, historic and economic factors that impinge upon the use, non-use and abuse of drugs.A number of critical factors shaping the health policies in the United States and around the world emphasize the need for increased research concerning the role of pharmaceuticals and the pharmacy practitioner in new and old systems of health care.
Pharmaceuticals & Informatics
Pharmacy is an information-intensive field with rapidly increasing volume and complexity. The American Society for Health–Systems Pharmacists recognizes that pharmacy informatics is an integral discipline within clinical informatics, centered on the effective management and delivery of medication related data, information, and knowledge across systems that support the medication-use process. PCHS is dedicated to both the development of data science methods and increasing current and future pharmacist’s knowledge of the application of informatics to pharmacy practice, safe medication use, clinical decision-making, and the improvement of medication therapy outcomes. Faculty in PCHS are at the forefront of research in this field with advanced expertise in information technology including high performance computing for converting big data to actionable knowledge, obtaining useful information from unstructured text using natural language processing, automation with robotics and artificial intelligence.
Scholarship in Education
PCHS Faculty and Trainees advance pharmacy education by innovating in their own classrooms and practice sites, disseminating findings of their innovations in scholarly forums and publications, and leading national dialogue and debate on educational policy and practice.