Improving Online Pharmacy Refills Through Data-Driven Patient Engagement

Success Metrics

45 %

increase in web-based refill requests

30 %

reduction in administrative phone call volume

18 %

improvement in measured medication adherence indicators

Introduction

A large regional hospital network sought to modernize its pharmacy refill process and reduce reliance on manual phone requests. Leadership recognized that to promote patient use of the existing online refill portal, they needed to consolidate fragmented prescription data and establish a reliable analytics foundation. With cleaner, trusted data, the organization aimed to streamline patient outreach, encourage digital self-service, and improve overall medication continuity.

Key Highlights

Data Engineering

Cloud Data Warehousing

Data Analytics

Business Challenges

Fragmented Legacy Data

Prescription, inventory, and patient communication systems were disconnected, making it difficult to provide real-time, unified information to the web portal.

High Operational Burden

Pharmacy teams were spending significant time managing routine refill calls, limiting availability for clinical consultation and higher-value tasks.

Patient Hesitancy Toward Digital Tools

Past inconsistencies in online data created mistrust among some patients and slowed adoption of digital refills.

Gaps in Adherence Support

Without timely prompts or reminders, some patients missed optimal refill windows, impacting medication adherence.

Solution

We built a modernized data platform centered on Snowflake to store and manage high-volume pharmacy and prescription data. Apache Airflow was used to orchestrate ingestion pipelines from multiple legacy systems, ensuring consistent and dependable data flow.

Using dbt, we implemented transformation and validation layers that standardized prescription data and calculated patient-level metrics such as days of supply remaining and refill readiness. These curated models powered automated outreach workflows that nudged patients ahead of refill lapses, along with Looker dashboards that gave leadership visibility into digital adoption, call volumes, refill timing, and patient engagement trends.

This framework enabled both operational staff and patient-facing teams to make data-informed decisions and support patients more proactively.

Business Impact

The organization gained a reliable, scalable analytics foundation that reduced manual workload while improving patient experience. By automating outreach and enhancing data quality, pharmacy staff experienced fewer operational interruptions and more time for clinical support. Patients benefited from clearer, more consistent reminders, helping build confidence in the digital refill pathway.

Technology Stack

Snowflake

dbt (data build tool)

Apache Airflow

Python

Case Studies

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Customer Feedback

The new data structure and automated reminders have been incredibly valuable. Our pharmacy staff can now dedicate more time to patient care and consultation.