Kevin B. Sneed, Pharm.D. is the Senior Associate Vice-President of USF Health as well as a tenured Professor and the founding Dean of the University of South Florida College of Pharmacy. His educational background includes a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology with a concentration in Microbiology from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Sneed received his Doctor of Pharmacy Degree from Xavier University of Louisiana College of Pharmacy, where he received numerous clinical and leadership awards. He completed an Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Practice Specialty Residency at Bay Pines Veteran’s Administration Medical Center.

The University of South Florida’s "Pharmacy of the Future," called USF Health Pharmacy Plus, is opening its doors to patients in February.

As you said earlier, the technology of medicine and the pharmacy is changing at a rapid pace. What do you see around the corner to address an unmet need?

I am working on that right now, but it is so futuristic that I’m not prepared to share it. I will say this: more care is going to take place in the community.

What I can talk about is one of our biggest opportunities that many people thought would be five or ten years off, but I believe we can accomplish now is personalized medicine with pharmacology. I think that’s something that can be accomplished in the community pharmacy setting, and we’re very intent on improving that.

This would be the practice of using a patient’s DNA to prescribe medicine?

Yes, it would be using this information to determine the best medication regimen for each patient, and that will eventually extend to the best dietary regimen for each patient. We will have the ability to hone in on who an individual is and build care plans and lifestyle plans around that knowledge. But of course, we have to do that in conjunction with the patient. They have to provide that access- we don’t want to invade a patient’s privacy. But again, that goes back to patient engagement. The more they know and understand the more they will want this knowledge and the more engaged they will be.

How do you see pharmacy education changing? With new technologies such as the RxMedic ADS, the days of pouring pills on trays and counting are disappearing. What skills and training will the pharmacist of 2020 or 2030 need to possess?

That’s a great question. I believe that in pharmacy education, overall we are aware of the need to change. With technology like the RxMedic ADS, the pharmacist often doesn’t have to touch a bottle. You don’t go to school for six years to count pills.

My concern is that technology and even consumers are evolving much more rapidly than we can train people to keep up with those changes. I’m doing everything I can here in our program to increase the knowledge curve rapidly for our students. The most important skill sets to possess is, number one, the ability to collaborate professionally. Collaboration is one of the most important things we can achieve in the next ten years. Without that you will NEVER achieve patient-centered care. It has to be inter-professional collaboration- a team that surrounds each and every patient. Number two, we have to improve the communication skills of our future pharmacists. We have to be able to communicate about any and every therapeutic case with any other health provider on demand. We need to be able to engage in that conversation. We can’t be limited to just the medication component.

At USF, you have added entrepreneurial training as a component of your pharmacy graduate school. What do you hope to achieve by doing that?

I believe through entrepreneurship you get a much more rapid evolution of almost anything, in this case, clinical practice. A true entrepreneur is always looking for a new and better way to accomplish a goal. At the end of the day, an entrepreneurship program is not about creating millionaires; it’s about creating people to think differently. It’s about having people go out and challenge themselves and challenge the healthcare industry to find a better way to achieve an approved health outcome. That’s my goal for our academic entrepreneurship endeavor.

What suggestions do you have for pharmacies and pharmacists who want to be "ahead of the curve," or ready for this rapidly changing environment in patient care?

Be prepared to change. The role of the pharmacist of the past is changing, and we have to be willing and prepared to change. Things are changing. Technology, such automation and wearables, are here to stay. I recently spoke with a pharmacist about the model of the future pharmacy, and he kept saying, "You can’t do that." And I kept saying, "If you don’t do it, you’re right, there won’t be enough pharmacy jobs and the current job will go away." If we say that one of the most important therapeutic things that a patient can do is take medication, and we are the medication experts, we must be willing to evolve to maintain our status as the medication expert on the health care team.

It sounds like you are saying that in the future of health care, if you’re not willing to evolve that could you end up on the sidelines of caring for the patient, so to speak, rather than on the team.

If you’re not careful, you’ll wind up extinct. Technology is not just affecting pharmacists. There is also technology that is impacting medical physicians as well. Significantly. All health care providers, including pharmacists, are going to have to evolve their practices.

Is there anything you know now that you wish you had known when you were in pharmacy school?

I wish we had a better understanding of the overall business of health care from all aspects, not just from the clinical side but also the payer side, insurance side, the regulation side, the overall business of health care. I wish I could have incorporated more of that when I was a student.

What advice would you give young people looking to begin a career as a pharmacist?

The advice I like to give people is "Think big." Don’t be limited to somebody else’s idea of what they think you are capable of doing. For example, I’ve been on the sports medicine team at the university for over 10 years. It’s not about going in and recommending pain medication; instead, it has been really helping the department to take care of athletes and take care of the health needs of athletes, and often thinking way outside the box. You go into this profession wanting to help people, so why not think big? Big thinkers will accept evolving technology, big thinkers will want to collaborate, and big thinkers will find better ways to achieve a health outcome for a patient.