Trend Study: The Pharmacies of the Future

Digitalization will transform the roles and tasks of tomorrow's pharmacies: The Ten Drivers Behind the ChangesYour Chance to Shape the Future: Five Scenarios, Five Strategies for the Pharmacy of the Future.

The pharmacies of the future will face tremendous challenges. The 2b AHEAD ThinkTank's latest trend study investigates how digitalization will fundamentally alter the role and business models of tomorrow's pharmacies, what traditional securities market players can no longer take for granted, and what specific strategic options pharmacists can use to proactively shape their future today.

The pharmacies of the future, the pharmacists of the future will be forced to find and secure their position anew in the digital world of 2026. Alongside the growing possibilities of self-measurement and self-optimization in healthcare, the boundaries between illness and health will become blurred. Patients will have access to far more data on the state of their health; this data will be more comprehensive, of better quality, and will originate from a more diverse range of sources than ever before. The flow of data between the patient, their electronic assistance system, expertise available online, the patient’s GP, medical specialists, clinics, medical institutions, and other providers on the healthcare market will determine how cooperation between industry players will work in 2026. Data will take on the leading function in the future, and the data flow will control who communicates – and does business – with whom.

This will have direct consequences for the work of tomorrow's pharmacies. The medical industry will become a consumer’s market. Customer needs will change, and customers will formulate new demands on the precision they expect from experts – exact statements on the probability of onset, severity, progression and duration of illness, as well as on the costs of treatment- and optimization processes. For pharmacists, this means: their medical judgment, recommendations, and advice will have to compete with the assessments of other players, expert and otherwise. New attackers will carve out space for themselves in the competitive arena, in many cases offering highly professional solutions for a demand that they themselves have created – a process that will accelerate significantly over the next ten years. The framework for corporate activities in the pharmacies sector will change, as will for the pharmaceutical activities of corporations.

This study investigates the market environment, driving forces, and scenarios facing the pharmacies of the future, and offers concrete strategic recommendations, and has as its foundation the previous major 2b AHEAD study "Personalized Medicine of the Future." "Pharmacies of the Future" employs concrete scenarios to show the steps pharmacists can take to lead their business model to a successful future, and explores the challenges already emerging today.

Download the study free of charge

Thanks to our cooperation with Apothekerverband Nordrhein e. V., the full study is available to you free of charge. Please do not hesitate to contact us or our partner if you are interested in using the expertise gained in this study to test the viability of your company strategies. We would love to help.

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We wish you an inspiring read ... and a great future!