{"id":55921,"date":"2026-03-27T11:15:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/?p=55921"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:15:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:15:21","slug":"promise-and-pitfalls-of-ai-in-health-care-at-center-of-uri-pharmacy-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/2026\/03\/27\/promise-and-pitfalls-of-ai-in-health-care-at-center-of-uri-pharmacy-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Promise and Pitfalls\u2019 of AI in health care at center of URI Pharmacy conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">College\u2019s 41<sup>st<\/sup> annual Seminar By the Sea examines how to responsibly integrate<br>AI into medication management<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite its relative infancy among world-changing technologies in human history\u2014the wheel, the printing press, electricity, the Internet\u2014artificial intelligence has most rapidly become ubiquitous, already adopted by billions of people just a few short years after becoming publicly available. AI has infiltrated virtually all aspects of life, including health and medicine, presenting enormous opportunities and challenges for clinicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The technology\u2019s advantages and pitfalls were front and center during the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy\u2019s 41<sup>st<\/sup> annual <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmce\/41st-annual-seminar-by-the-sea-northeast-regional-hybrid-conference\/\">Seminar By the Sea Northeast Regional Conference<\/a>, which incorporated AI in a way that aligns directly with pharmacy practice. Rather than positioning AI as a standalone topic, as they have in previous conferences, organizers embedded the technology into the program throughout the event held March 19-20, creating interactive sessions and practical demonstrations that reflect real-world medication management workflows, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/mary-jane-kanaczet\/\">Mary-Jane Kanaczet<\/a>, director of continuing professional development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, participants explored:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Drug information and clinical question support: Using AI tools to efficiently retrieve and synthesize evidence in response to pharmacist and patient inquiries.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Patient communication and health literacy, including language translation and simplifying complex medication instructions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Prompt refinement: Helping pharmacists ask better questions to generate clinically useful, reliable outputs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Administrative efficiency: Reducing documentation burden and supporting workflow optimization.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe session was designed to be highly interactive, allowing pharmacists to engage directly with these tools and consider how they can be applied responsibly in practice,\u201d Kanaczet said. \u201cThese conversations are woven throughout the conference as part of our focus on translating emerging tools into safe, effective, and patient-centered medication use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-55923\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.4999999542236342;width:433px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-364x243.jpg 364w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Seminar-Kery-Rhonda.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">URI College of Pharmacy Dean Kerry LaPlante interviews Rhonda Pacheco, president of Takeda&#8217;s U.S. Business Unit and a URI alumnus, during the college&#8217;s Seminar By the Sea conference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The conference reflects efforts in the College of Pharmacy to incorporate AI into teaching and practice, said <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/kerry-laplante\/\">Dean Kerry LaPlante<\/a>. \u201cAI has tremendous potential to enhance how we deliver medication-related care, but it must be approached thoughtfully,\u201d the dean said. \u201cOur responsibility as a college is to prepare pharmacists who can critically evaluate these tools, integrate them safely into practice, and always keep patient care at the center.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sessions surrounding AI included an interactive activity in which audience participants questioned an AI platform on health-related issues and tested the bot\u2019s response. Led by URI pharmacy professors <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/brett-feret\/\">Brett Ferret<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/jeffrey-bratberg\/\">Jeffrey Bratberg<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/todd-brothers\/\">Todd Brothers<\/a>\u2014who explained how to submit specific queries to get the most accurate responses\u2014audience members tested AI\u2019s accuracy with questions such as, \u201cIs a course of Linezolid (an antibiotic used to treat serious bacterial infections) with a fentanyl infusion a cause for concern?\u201d While the AI platform offered advice to monitor patients carefully when combining the drugs, it added a disclaimer: \u201cI am not a physician or pharmacist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is an important distinction to keep in mind, according to Sean Jeffrey, professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut, who presented a session on the \u201cPromise and Pitfalls of AI in Pharmacy Practice.\u201d Jeffrey detailed the on-going progression from AI to Artificial General Intelligence, where machines start to learn for themselves\u2014which he said the technology is close to achieving\u2014to the eventual goal of Artificial Super Intelligence, where machines exceed human capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some scientists believe ASI may be achieved in as little as four years, exacerbating the need for society to find a way to place controls on the technology to \u201cprevent unintended consequences,\u201d said Jeffrey, who is also director of pharmacy at Hartford Healthcare Group. \u201cThe tech doesn\u2019t matter if people don\u2019t trust it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That need for trust and control over the technology is even more evident in health care as more clinicians take advantage of AI\u2019s potential\u2014from ambient listening technology, which automatically transcribes patient-physician interactions during appointments, to companies such as MedMe Health, which offers a pharmaceutical chatbot that answers patient calls, gathers patient information, books appointments, and even answers some patient questions. Other examples of AI in health care include using wearable tech to monitor vital signs, and the increasing use of platforms to diagnose symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re moving closer to clinical services being performed without a human, but what happens when AI gets a dosage wrong? We need to keep humans in the loop,\u201d said Jeffrey, noting organizations like the Coalition for Health AI is working to ensure responsible adoption of AI in health care. \u201cWe\u2019re not at the point of robots interacting with patients, but it\u2019s possible in the future. Pharmacists need to control the ultimate decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other tech-driven sessions at this year\u2019s conference, \u201cFrom Data to Dialogue: Where Science Meets Patient Care,\u201d included advice on using social media for pharmacy communication; and the use of AI in antibiotic stewardship, addressing how pharmacists can anticipate safety problems with cognitive automation in pharmacy practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAt this year\u2019s Seminar by the Sea, we\u2019re not treating artificial intelligence as a future concept\u2014we\u2019re demonstrating how it can be responsibly integrated into everyday medication management,\u201d Kanaczet said. \u201cFrom supporting drug information and clinical decision-making to enhancing patient communication and reducing administrative burden, our goal is to help pharmacists translate emerging technologies into safer, more effective, and more patient-centered care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>College\u2019s 41st annual Seminar By the Sea examines how to responsibly integrateAI into medication management Despite its relative infancy among world-changing technologies in human history\u2014the wheel, the printing press, electricity, the Internet\u2014artificial intelligence has most rapidly become ubiquitous, already adopted by billions of people just a few short years after becoming publicly available. AI has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":55922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55924,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55921\/revisions\/55924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}