The Conversation

Public health and private equity: What the Walgreens buyout could mean for the future of pharmacy care

Pharmacies are more than just stores – they’re vital links between people and their health care.

One of us, Patrick, witnessed this firsthand in 2003 while working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens in a midsize West Texas town. Each day involved handling hundreds of prescriptions as they moved through the system – meticulously counting pills, deciphering doctors’ handwriting and sorting out confusing insurance issues. The experience revealed that how pharmacies are owned and managed is as much a public health issue as it is a financial one.

Regulating AI seems like an impossible task, but ethically and economically, it’s a vital one

AlinStock/ShutterstockAI has already transformed industries and the way the world works. And its development has been so rapid that it can be hard to keep up. This means that those responsible for dealing with AI’s impact on issues such as safety, privacy and ethics must be equally speedy.

But regulating such a fast-moving and complex sector is extremely difficult.

Pages

Subscribe to The Conversation