Implications for policy makers. Community pharmacists are underutilized primary healthcare PHC service providers. Their concentration in urban centres remains a significant challenge for universal health coverage. Policy action is required to incentivize establishment of community pharmacies in rural communities. Integrating community pharmacists in the PHC architecture will significantly improve access to care and overall health outcomes in Nigeria.
Community pharmacies are private-sector facilities providing spatial proximity and easy accessibility to quality primary healthcare PHC services to people in their communities. With inadequate capacities in public sector facilities, people should have an option to access certain PHC services in their community pharmacies. If community pharmacies are integrated with the public sector service providers, patients will enjoy improved continuity of care with easy referrals along both vertical and horizontal channels of care.
Community pharmacies are private sector healthcare facilities, under the direct oversight of registered pharmacists, and offer a wide range of primary healthcare PHC services in addition to the traditional dispensing of prescribed medications. From the Alma Ata Declaration of to date, PHC have proven to be an important framework for improving access to quality healthcare services, particularly in the developing countries. If properly deployed, digital technologies have the capacity to facilitate access to PHC services to underserved communities.
There is an emerging consensus that attaining these goals may be impossible without the adoption of appropriate digital technologies including point-of-care diagnostics. While digital technologies have been shown to enhance these services, 9 there is limited data on their level of adoption by community pharmacists. There is also the need to examine to what extent these technologies impact on quality of PHC services offered by the community pharmacists. While several theoretical frameworks exist in literature in relation to the adoption of relevant technologies, the Technology Acceptance Model 11 seems most appropriate for the community pharmacy scenario because of its ability to calibrate the fit between technology and user tasks, and the power to predict use, individual intention to perform a behavior and accept technology.
According to Technology Acceptance Model, subject to certain variables in the external environment, the attitude of community pharmacists towards a new technology will depend on its perceived usefulness and ease of use Figure.
