The focus of pharmacy practice in the future will be on optimizing and improving patients' outcomes, promoting health maintenance, and improving quality of life. These aims will be accomplished, in part, through integrated systems designed to promote patient education and follow-up. Pharmacists will become increasingly involved in primary care, utilize physical assessment skills and prescribe under protocol. These changes in the practice environment will place pharmacists in a position to provide cost-effective pharmacotherapy.

Evolutionary changes in pharmacy education and practice will require practitioners to enhance current skills, develop new skills and competencies, and advance new practice roles. Advances in the pharmaceutical sciences will continue, allowing application of increasingly sophisticated methodology in the solution of basic and applied problems relating to pharmacotherapy and health care delivery.