Application, Benefits, and Limitations of Telepharmacy for Patients with Diabetes in the Outpatient Setting

Abstract

After the COVID-19 pandemic, telepharmacy has become increasingly widely used as an alternative to pharmaceutical care by remote pharmacists. Patients with diabetes mellitus are one of the patients who get benefit the most from telepharmacy practices, which allow patients to consult without meeting face to face and minimize the risk of virus transmission. The authors conduct an assessment of the benefits and limitations of using telepharmacy that are used throughout the world and then hopes that they can become a reference in the development of telepharmacy in the future. A total of 23 relevant articles were used for analysis in this narrative review after searching for articles in three sources, including PubMed, Google Scholar and ClinicalTrials.gov, until October 2022. This narrative review shows that telepharmacy plays an important role in improving clinical outcomes, patient therapy adherence and reduce the number of patient visit and hospitalization, but telepharmacy also has limitations in its use related to security and privacy, as well as pharmacist intervention that has not been maximized. However, telepharmacy has great potential to facilitate diabetes mellitus patients in pharmaceutical services.