Episode 74: Pharmacy Appreciation Month - Joshua Torrance

In today’s episode, Jared and I had the chance to chat with one of pharmacy’s best in Joshua Torrance. Joshua is the current CSHP Alberta Branch President, so the focus of the podcast was to find out a little more about who Joshua is and what are some of his roles and responsibilities.

 

Joshua graduated from the University of Alberta in 2009 with a BSc Honours in Immunology and Infections before going into pharmacy and getting his BSc Pharm in 2014. He then went on to complete his residency in 2015, officially getting his ACPR designation. He started his professional career at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, where he re-developed how the outpatient stroke prevention clinic functioned, making pharmacists responsible for the management of stroke risk factors, such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes. Not stopping there, Joshua then became a Clinical Practice Leader, during which he collaborated with General Internal Medicine (GIM) to create the first Infectious Diseases consult service in Central Zone AHS. Presently, he works with the AHS Pharmacy Services Connect Care team to develop innovative solutions to implement a seamless clinical information system that will connect all patients and providers with their health information across Alberta.

 

On the side, he created his own company with a former Pharmacy Manager, QlinicalRx, which provides tools to support community pharmacists in delivering and documenting clinical patient care services.

 

For “fun”, Joshua is a hobbyist programmer and is always looking for ways to leverage technology to solve health care problems. One notable achievement was the creation of the Alberta Blue Cross Drug Price Calculator (https://studybuffalo.com/tools/drug-price-calculator/), which was designed to help hospital pharmacists determine how much medications will cost a patient to allow better discharge planning decisions.

 

It was mind blowing to talk with Joshua about his journey through pharmacy, and we hope you guys, the listeners, share our enthusiasm!