"Achieving Health for All: Pharmacy Optimising Primary Health Care Through Digital Technology"

Health development faces new challenges, where the life expectancy of the community is getting longer. This results in an increase in the level and complexity of comorbidities, long-term management of disease, and the resulting complexity of drug treatment and pharmacotherapy. Linear increasing in health population must be fixed. WHO through the 2018 Astana Declaration has confirm primary health care as the most inclusive, effective, and efficient approach to increasing people’s physical health, and mentality, and is the foundation of a sustainable health system within universal health coverage. Successes strengthening in primary health care will be achieved by technology uses, so access for health care can be expanded, ways of providing health services more enriched, and then quality of health service and patient safety more improved, and effectivity and coordination of health services getting better.

A study published in the Journal of Medical Economics shows that using mobile Health (mHealth) saves $ 88 in health costs per month during the first year of use of mHealth. The study concluded that better health care management using digital technology, reduced about 22% of monthly health costs. With the inauguration of the Astana Declaration, the role of pharmacists in the health system must be strengthened. Pharmacists, as medicine experts, have a key role in providing direct health care services - especially primary health care (PHC) - to improve patient safety.

The role of pharmacists in monitoring therapeutic outcomes and preventing primary disease can mean that pharmacists are stakeholders in promoting a healthy lifestyle, preventing disease, and contributing to better therapeutic outcomes for society. In carrying out these various roles, pharmacists can also take advantage of digital technology (mHealth). The Indonesian Pharmacists Association (IPA) realizes the importance of pharmacists to become adaptive, flexible and competent health workers in facing these challenges. Therefore, IAI in collaboration with FIP launched the Workforce Transformation Program (WTP) / Pharmacist Transformation Program (PTA). PTA is a global program launched by FIP to support its members, in this case IPA, in carrying out the transformation of pharmacists in their respective countries, which are tailored to national.

Taking into this background, Indonesian pharmacists need to continue and develop competencies, capacities, insights and networks in carrying out responsible pharmaceutical practices.