20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

Let's talk about the positives first, shall we? Anyone who has an older relative—and we hope that's every non-Batman reader we have—knows they take a lot of pills. Those pills don't grow on trees. That would be insane. They have to be distributed by pharmacy technicians.

The population of the U.S. is aging. Those Baby Boomers you've heard so much about are right in the middle of retirement age, which is prime pill-needing territory. More pills means more pharmacy techs, and presumably more regrettable purchases on late night shopping networks (source).

Additionally, the Affordable Care Act has allowed a ton of new people to get access to medication that they might not have been able to get otherwise. An aging populace that gets all the pills they need? Why aren't all pharmacy techs looking at futures filled with swimming in a giant Scrooge McDuck tower of money?

The short answer is that automation, like winter, is coming (source). There are lots of benefits to having a machine distribute your pills, especially if the medicine is for something embarrassing. A lot of places are beginning to try it, and if it goes well—and as the technology improves, it should—pharmacy techs could become a thing of the past.