AI for pharmacies: customers, service bookings and loyalty

The AI for pharmacies serves to remove from the desk requests that do not need a pharmacist: schedules and shifts, orders arrived, reservations of ECGs, holters or vaccines, reminders of the prescription sent in chat. An assistant connected to the agenda and management software responds, book or sort, and passes to a person everything related to the health of the customer.

In the pharmacy that boundary is written in the norms, and it is better to know it before choosing an instrument. The decree on the pharmacy of services, for the analysis of first instance, excludes in any case prescription and diagnosis, the code of ethics entrusts the pharmacist with the advice on medicines, the code of medicines prohibits the advertising to the public of prescription drugs. A project built inside these stakes frees hours of bench time. One who ignores them creates problems with customers and with the Order.

What requests can an AI assistant sort and which remain to the pharmacist

Take any Tuesday as an example. The phone rings to know who is on duty on Sunday, on WhatsApp one customer asks if the cream ordered yesterday arrived, another wants to book the pressure holter, a gentleman asks if he can take an anti-inflammatory along with the therapy for pressure. The first three are organizational demands. The fourth is counseling, and the answer is up to you.

The Pharmacist's code of ethics approved by FOFI in 2018 says in Article 15: in advice and advice the pharmacist guarantees clear, correct and complete information on the appropriate use of medicines, contraindications, interactions, side effects and storage. An automatic system does not replace it, but it can recognize the question and pass it immediately to those who are enabled to answer.

The delicate line is the fifth. A linguistic model questioned about an interaction between drugs still responds, in a safe tone, and can be wrong: they are the hallucinations. The instructions of the system must then list the themes on which to stop, and in the first weeks someone must reread the conversations as a sample. It goes in the same direction as the Italian law on artificial intelligence, which in Article 7 wants the systems used in the health field reliable, verified and updated periodically, and recognizes the right to know when the AI is used.

The photo of the reminder on WhatsApp: dematerialized prescriptions and health data in chat

With the dematerialized prescription the pharmacy recovers the prescription by communicating to the central reception system the electronic prescription number (NRE) and the tax code reported on the reminder, as explained by the the Health Card System portal. So it happens that a customer takes the reminder and sends it to the chat: convenient, but that photo carries with it tax code and prescribed drugs.

They are Health Data, which Article 9 of the GDPR treats as a particular category. In the 2020 opinion on how to deliver the reminder, the Guarantor set precise cautions: via email the reminder travels as an encrypted attachment, with a separately delivered credential, and via SMS you send the NRE alone (opinion of the Guarantor of 19 March 2020). Those rules are about the doctor who prescribes, but they say how much that document weighs even when it gets to you.

In chat also come the veterinary prescriptions, which the D.Lgs. 218/2023 requires in electronic form. For validity, the assistant can give the general rules in Article 28: six months and at most ten uses for a repeat prescription, thirty days for a non-repeat prescription and five days for antimicrobials. Checking each individual prescription remains the responsibility of the person dispensing it.

If the assistant handles the pharmacy's WhatsApp number, the minimum rules are these:

• recognizes that the message contains a prescription and replies with a fixed text, such as "received, the pharmacist sees it and we will write you when it is ready";
• does not extract drug names or therapies for use in other streams, such as promotions;
• moves the conversation to a queue visible only to the one who dispenses;
• runs on a platform with a data and server processing contract that you know;
• delete images after a period you decide with your privacy advisor.

The code of ethics asks the pharmacist to enforce professional secrecy also to collaborators and persons in charge of processing (Article 39). Today that chain also includes who sets up the chat and the provider of the tool. For the technical part of the channel there is the guide to WhatsApp chatbots for businesses.

Services pharmacy: telemedicine, testing and vaccines on the agenda without stopping the bench

The Legislative Decree 153/2009, in the text in force since December 2025, lists what a pharmacy can offer: analytical services of first instance, telemedicine services carried out by the pharmacist within the limits of his competences, vaccines of the National Plan of Vaccination Prevention for those at least twelve years old, tests with nasal, salivary or oropharyngeal sample, screening for hepatitis C. The letter f) adds the reservation of specialist visits, the payment of the ticket, the choice of the family doctor or pediatrician and the withdrawal of reports.

Two details of the same item weigh on the booking assistant. The letter e) excludes in any case prescription and diagnosis, so the system proposes schedules and does not suggest which test to do. And law 182 of 2025, as reported in the update note on Normattiva, charged users with the performance of the letters from e-quater to e-septies: the customer asks for the price before booking, and the assistant must give it exact, reading a list that updates you.

There is another aspect that generic booking software misses: the schedule depends on resources as well as time slots. An ambulatory blood-pressure monitor stays with the customer for many hours and becomes available only when returned; the consultation room is used for both tests and vaccinations; and only a pharmacist who has completed the qualifying course of the Italian National Institute of Health and follows the annual updates can vaccinate. A properly configured assistant checks these constraints together: it does not offer a vaccination on a day when only a colleague without the qualification is on duty, and it does not promise a blood-pressure monitor when all the devices are out.

For the CUP the real reservation passes from the systems provided by your Region. Here the assistant works upstream: collects in the evening the requests arrived by phone or in chat, asks what it takes to proceed and fixes a call, so in the morning the staff works them in block. If the phone is the main channel, start from a AI switchboard who responds when the bench is full.

Offers, social and loyalty card: what AI can write for the pharmacy

The post of the month written with AI must comply with the Code of Medicines, which in Article 115 prohibits the advertising to the public of prescription medicines and those whose dispensing is charged, even in part, to the National Health Service, and prohibits the distribution of medicinal products for promotional purposes. L'Article 118 adds that no advertising of medicines to the public is done without authorization from the Ministry of Health, with a few exceptions: among these, photos of the packages on the price signs and discounts of the drugs without prescription exposed by those who sell them.

The code of ethics, in Article 23, considers free the advertising of the pharmacy if it is correct, truthful, transparent and not equivocal, and expressly admits that they make known services, departments and prices practiced. For the advertising of the profession he also asks to transmit its content to the Order at the time when it is activated. Practice rule: no generated text comes out without a person reading it.

On loyalty the reference is the Guarantor. In clarifications of 7 March 2019 on health data lists among treatments that require consent those of customer loyalty made by pharmacies with points accumulation programs. First you collect consent, then you use the purchase history, and the messages stay on consumer products and services. The Logic of recall of customers It also works here, within a tighter perimeter.

Two examples: a rural pharmacy and a pharmacy near the station

Federfarma, the federation that represents over 18,000 private pharmacies affiliated with the National Health Service, has within it a union dedicated to rural pharmacies, the Sunifar.

The rural pharmacy. Think of a pharmacy with two pharmacists in a country where many customers are elderly and prefer to telephone. voice assistant responds out of hours with shifts and schedules, collects CUP booking requests and puts them on the list for the morning. Those who call with a doubt about a drug leave the name and are called back by the pharmacist. No one at the counter has to interrupt the customer in front of them to tell what time it opens on Saturdays.

The pharmacy near the station. Here the channel is WhatsApp: customers send photos of prescription reminders, ask about ordered products and request ambulatory monitoring. The assistant acknowledges receipt of prescriptions and puts them in the pharmacist’s queue, answers order questions using the business software and books monitors according to the devices available. Promotions are sent only to loyalty-card holders who have consented, and concern dermocosmetics and childcare products. This only works if the business software accurately reports stock levels, which is where it helps to keep track of Warehouse and Inventory.

Where to jam an AI project in the pharmacy

• The bot he advises. Just a question about dosages or interactions let through to get a clinical indication given with safe tone.
• Handwritten turns and times in the instructions. If the calendar changes and no one updates the system, the assistant sends customers in front of a down door. The source must be one, the one you already keep updated.
• The dot card without consent. Using the purchase history for promotional messages without consent goes against the indications of the Guarantor of 2019.
• Prescriptions in an open channel. Reminder photos forwarded into the staff group or saved on private phones multiply copies of health data.
• The AI that doesn't show up. The customer must know that he writes to an automatic system and be able to ask a person: in the health sector it is provided by Law 132/2025, and the AI Act asks those who provide chatbots to make it clear (see the obligations of the AI Act for SMEs).

The first month: where to start in the pharmacy

1. Count the interruptions for a week. Mark phone calls and messages divided by type: shifts and times, orders, reservations, prescriptions, clinical questions. The count tells you which channel to automate first.
2. Write the sorting rules. For each type of request you decide whether the assistant answers, if he passes the desk or if he should be called back. Questions about drugs and symptoms always go to the pharmacist.
3. Link the real sources. Shift calendar, service price list, appointment calendar with devices, order status in the business management software. An assistant that invents availability does more harm than an answering machine.
4. Fix privacy before turning on. Information, contract with the supplier, time for cancellation of images, consent for the card. In list of treatments subject to impact assessment the data protection authority includes artificial intelligence systems and voice assistants when at least one other risk criterion applies, as well as non-occasional processing of data relating to vulnerable people such as older people and patients: for an assistant handling prescriptions and healthcare bookings, you should plan the DPIA with your DPO; for the basics, see the guide to GDPR and artificial intelligence in the company.
5. Be a small pilot. A channel, a month and a number to compare at the end, for example calls on schedules and shifts. How to set it you can find it in the guide to AI Pilot Project.

A pharmacy that earns on it did not buy "an AI": it decided which requests no longer have to interrupt the counter, it linked the assistant to the real data and left the pharmacist advice, prescriptions and communications on medicines. If you want to understand which channel to remove first from your counter and how to link it to the agenda of services, write to us from the page dedicated to private health or start from a audit of pharmacy processes.