Implementing Electronic Health Records in Community Pharmacy Practice: Insights from developed health systems

Community pharmacists play a critical role in medication management, patient education, and chronic disease support. Yet their ability to provide safe, coordinated, and efficient care is often hindered by limited access to essential clinical information such as medication histories, allergy records, laboratory results, and chronic condition details. Electronic Health Records (EHRs), comprehensive digital systems that enable information sharing across healthcare providers, offer a promising solution. This analysis explores how EHRs can empower community pharmacists to deliver more informed, integrated, and patient-centred care. It also identifies key barriers to pharmacist engagement, including restricted system access, fragmented digital infrastructure, limited interoperability, and insufficient training in digital health tools. To address these challenges, system-level reforms are needed such as investment in digital connectivity, policy changes to formally recognise pharmacists as core members of multidisciplinary care teams, and practical strategies for EHR integration into community pharmacy practice.