Involvement in medical informatics may enable pharmacists to expand their consultation potential and improve the quality of healthcare.

The outlook for pharmacy-related services foretells more involvement of both computers and information systems. Expert therapeutic systems and databases will enable pharmacists to expand their consultation potential through networks and improve the quality of healthcare that they provide. Therapeutic information management could be the largest pharmacy specialty of the future. As knowledge-based systems and networks become commonplace, there will be an increasing need for new components, system monitoring, and quality assurance. This is an opportunity for pharmacy to bring medical computing, as it relates to therapeutics, into the mainstream of the profession as a new discipline.