Digital transformation in community pharmacy management: Pharmacists' readiness for cloud computing systems, implementation concerns, and adoption support.

BACKGROUND

Cloud computing is increasingly positioned as a key enabler of digital transformation in pharmacy practice, offering potential benefits for information access, workflow flexibility, data storage, backup, and service continuity. However, pharmacists' readiness to adopt cloud-enabled pharmacy systems remains insufficiently examined, particularly in community pharmacy settings.

OBJECTIVE

This study assessed pharmacists' readiness for cloud computing adoption as part of digital transformation in community pharmacy management, focusing on perceived usefulness, digital-service orientation, service quality, cost and value, security and privacy, infrastructure readiness, backup and recovery, and demographic predictors of adoption support.

METHODS

An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted using a validated electronic questionnaire. Eligible participants were licensed pharmacists with current or previous community-pharmacy experience. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize response patterns, chi-square tests examined bivariate associations, and Cramér's V was used to quantify the strength of statistically significant associations. Multivariable logistic regression identified independent predictors of readiness and support for cloud-service adoption.

RESULTS

Pharmacists showed strong receptiveness toward cloud-enabled pharmacy services. Most respondents agreed or strongly agreed that cloud computing could be useful for the pharmacy sector (89.1%), support wider electronic pharmaceutical services (93.7%), improve service quality (89.6%), and improve service flexibility (89.1%). However, uncertainty remained regarding cost reduction, return on investment, start-up cost, internet reliability, offline continuity, and privacy/security risks. In multivariable regression analysis, female pharmacists had higher odds of supporting cloud services than male pharmacists (OR = 7.024; 95% CI: 1.60-30.72; p = 0.010), and pharmacists aged ≤35 years had higher odds than older pharmacists (OR = 5.778; 95% CI: 2.31-14.39; p < 0.001). The model demonstrated good discrimination (AUC = 0.820; 95% CI: 0.683-0.956).

CONCLUSION

Pharmacists demonstrated high perceived readiness for cloud computing adoption, but implementation depends on resolving cost, connectivity, offline-continuity, and privacy/security concerns. A data-informed and Diffusion of Innovations-informed readiness framework is proposed to guide future validation and implementation planning.