The Perception of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Students on the Future of Smart City Healthcare Technologies in Jordan: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Pharmacists' views on smart city healthcare technologies are essential to successful implementation, as they shape smart city design to meet pharmacists' needs and preferences. This study evaluates Jordanian pharmacists' and pharmacy students' perceptions and attitudes toward using smart city healthcare technologies. Methods: This web-based, cross-sectional study used a questionnaire disseminated in Jordan between June and September 2024. The sample size was 523. Results: Most participants recognized the influence of smart city healthcare technologies in improving pharmacy practice by boosting the efficiency of the pharmacist's role (94.5%), increasing access to real-time patient data (94.3%), facilitating better infrastructure for electronic pharmacy services, including digital prescriptions (96.4%), and easing collaboration with other healthcare providers (95.4%). At the patient level, 94.5% of participants believed that smart city healthcare technologies could augment outcomes and reduce costs. However, only 48.6% expected an obvious improvement in patients' adherence to their medications. On the other hand, more than half of participants anticipated better health for citizens, job creation, and lower living costs. 43.9% of participants believed that implementation and maintenance costs were the most common obstacle to applying smart city healthcare technologies. Female participants were more likely to agree that such services are easy to use (p = 0.02), but this association was not significant after adjustment. Conclusion: Pharmacists and pharmacy students in Jordan believe that smart city healthcare technologies will be valuable and advantageous to pharmacy practice. However, effective implementation will require addressing key challenges, including implementation and maintenance costs, data security, and interoperability.