October 2026
Dear Colleagues,
As summer transitions to fall and we begin another year for the Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology, I have found myself thinking about connections. Throughout my career, some of my most meaningful experiences have come from the people I have had the opportunity to work alongside, learn from and occasionally solve some unique problems with. Many of those relationships started through pharmacy informatics, while others crossed into analytics, operations, education, medicine, nursing and disciplines well beyond pharmacy.
That is one of the things I value most about our specialty: informatics rarely happens in isolation. Our work connects people, technology and information. It connects clinical practice with operations. It connects ideas with implementation. And, at its best, it brings together people with different experiences and expertise to solve problems none of us could solve as effectively on our own. SOPIT represents one of those connections for me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as your chair this year.
Building on the work of others
Before looking ahead, I want to recognize several people whose leadership has positioned our Section for another exciting year.
Jeffrey Chalmers, thank you for your unwavering support of SOPIT and for continuing to push our Section toward meaningful change. I look forward to seeing the impact you will make representing our Section on the Council on Pharmacy Practice.
David Agüero, thank you for your leadership as chair this past year and for continuing the evolution of SOPIT. I am grateful that we will continue to benefit from your perspective and experience as immediate past chair.
I also want to thank Vickie Powell for her guidance and support as our Board Liaison this past year and welcome Dawn Moore as our Board Liaison for the year ahead.
Scott Anderson, thank you for the steady support you provide our Section and its volunteers.
Looking forward to this year’s Executive Committee. Casey Olsen, thank you for your service as director-at-large, and welcome back to the Executive Committee as chair-elect. I am also excited to welcome Samuel Ubanyionwu as director-at-large-elect. Emmanuel Enwere and Kendall Gross, thank you for everything you contributed this past year. I look forward to continuing our work together and seeing where we can take the next Section.
Most importantly, thank you to everyone who raised a hand to become involved with SOPIT this year and to those who continue to contribute through our Section Advisory Groups (SAGs) and other Section activities. The time you give to this work matters, and your leadership does not go unnoticed.
Our SAGs have an exciting docket of work underway this year. I am looking forward to seeing those ideas develop into resources, education and other deliverables that can make a meaningful difference for our members and the profession.
Creating more opportunities to connect
We also want to create more opportunities for our members to connect with one another, and with colleagues outside the traditional boundaries of our field. You will see that reflected at the 2026 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition.
This year, SOPIT is collaborating with the Section of Digital and Telehealth Practitioners on a new networking and poster session focused on informatics and digital health. The session is intended for pharmacy informaticists as well as anyone interested in informatics, technology or digital health.
We will begin with a facilitated discussion focused on informatics, followed by a poster session featuring professional poster presentations and PGY2 pharmacy informatics residents sharing their research. The session will be held on Sunday, December 6, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in West Hall A2, Level 2 of the Orange County Convention Center West Building.
I am particularly excited about this event because it represents what I hope we continue to build within SOPIT: opportunities for people at different stages of their careers and across different areas of practice to meet, exchange ideas and learn from one another.
And this will not be our only opportunity to connect at Midyear. More information about SOPIT events and collaborative activities with other ASHP sections will be coming soon.
The year ahead
Technology, the tools we work with, and our collective body of knowledge will certainly continue to change this year. Some of those changes will be exciting, while others will create entirely new problems for us to solve. But technology and knowledge are only part of what makes our field special. It is the people behind them – the people asking better questions, challenging assumptions, sharing what they have learned and helping one another turn ideas into better ways to care for patients.
Those connections make our Section stronger, and they extend far beyond SOPIT. I look forward to seeing which connections we strengthen and what new ones we build throughout the coming year.
Your Executive Committee looks forward to serving you, learning alongside you and continuing to move our Section forward. I am excited to see what we will accomplish together.
Regards,
Bryan Shaw, PharmD, DPLA, FASHP
Chair, Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology
