Jennifer Tryon Believes in the Autonomous Pharmacy

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Before serving as chief pharmacy officer at Henry Ford Health, Jennifer Tryon started her career at Oregon Health & Science University in 2006, following her residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. She joined to help the organization chart a path to a successful electronic medical record deployment by transforming its pharmacy practice model.

That experience not only taught her the ins and outs of pharmacy but also laid the foundation for her thought leadership and passion for advancing healthcare through innovation.

“Very early on in my career, I experienced creative dissatisfaction where I saw many gaps in pharmacy systems and technology and the need to creatively innovate different options. That led to designing pharmacies and practice models differently, but I realized what we needed did not yet exist on the market,” she says.

“We talked about optimizing care, but to do so meant we needed to transform available technology and information systems to be comprehensive and require fewer manual steps. If we were to design care from what I call a blank sheet of paper, how would we design it, and what would we need for it to operate safely and efficiently?”  

Tryon aimed to answer that question in every role she took on thereafter. She spent the next 12 years leading pharmacy teams at institutions across the country, including at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, University of Chicago Medicine, and Atrium Wake Forest Baptist. Her exposure to pharmacy in community hospitals, academic health systems, and integrated delivery networks gave her a broad perspective that informs her belief in the need for a vision called the “autonomous pharmacy.”

“We need technology, systems, and data intelligence that interfaces across the whole continuum of care, so that our people can stop doing things that technology and information systems can do for us,” says Tryon, who previously chaired the Autonomous Pharmacy Advisory Board.

“We need our systems to be comprehensive and work interoperably so that our pharmacy professionals can be freed up to work top of license,” she elaborates. “So they can greet patients and ask, ‘How can I help?’ instead of spending time on wicked problems such as finding missing medications or dealing with expired drugs. These are things that shouldn’t even be issues, because in highly reliable systems, they would never occur.”

“Jennifer is a visionary leader, inspiring her team and partners to achieve healthcare excellence,” says Lidia Rodriguez-Hupp, Chief Customer Officer of The Craneware Group. “Her dedication to integrating innovative technology into operations supports better outcomes at Henry Ford Health and empowers our shared objective to transform healthcare.”

Since joining Henry Ford Health System in 2021, Tryon and her colleagues have made immense strides in crafting that data-driven approach to care. They’ve created innovative mediation management solutions through the Central Pharmacy Services Center (CPSC), which opened in October 2023.

“Often, leadership structures look like a triangle with the leader at the top. We operate as a circle around our vision and our mission of service to patients and communities.”

Jennifer Tryon

The center, which handles all medication orders and distribution, is a fully automated facility that can process more than 1,000 requests a day, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. Before its implementation, employees had to manually count stocked medications, and the health system lacked full supply visibility, standardization, and coordination. Tryon calls the center “the gift that keeps on giving.”

“We have created a central pharmacy hub for enterprise pharmacy operations and business services. Our goal is to create high reliability in our pharmacy systems and access to actional data intelligence at our fingertips so we can free our team members up to interact more with patients and exercise their expertise to drive improved outcomes. The CPSC is the catalyst for this transformation,” she says.  

“Strategic partnership was vital for the creation of the CPSC. As healthcare professionals, we are experts in where the issues exist across the medication use continuum, but we need to bring special teams and companies to the table who are experts in building hardware and software solutions that are comprehensive, span across all sites of care, and provide data insights that are actionable and timely. We cannot innovate transformational change without these partnerships,” she says.  

Strong leadership is essential to developing a vision and leading teams. Tryon brings to the table a highly positive, aspirational, and inspirational leadership style.

“I like to focus on the big picture thinking—what we can achieve and how we achieve it. Doing so allows us, as one team, to dream what is possible and believe that together, we can achieve it. Through that inspiration, I believe we can transform how care is delivered at Henry Ford Health, and ultimately, that patients will benefit from how we deliver care,” she says.

Diversity is just as important to Tryon. She always says her team is “a circle, not a triangle.”

“Everyone has different skill sets and expertise. They bring something different to the team. Often, leadership structures look like a triangle with the leader at the top. We operate as a circle around our vision and our mission of service to patients and communities. I welcome diversity of thought and the creativity and innovation that result from different perspectives and experience.”

For leaders at the beginning of their autonomous pharmacy journey, Tryon has some important advice.

“The first thing is to look at what’s important. For us, it’s about leaning into our mission of service and innovation to create value for our patients. We chose the pharmacy profession to serve others,” she says. “So, having that mindset and linking everything you do to that service piece is critical.”

 Secondly, you need to have a very clear vision, she says.

“If you believe in creating technology-enabled pharmacy practice models that produce outcomes with high reliability and freeing up pharmacy professionals to operate at the top of their license so they can deliver better patient care, the question is: How do you create systems that align across all areas and provide you with the data needed to have a meaningful impact on patient outcomes? To do that requires strong leadership, anchoring to a vision for transformational change in how we deliver care, and strategic partnership to innovate systems that support the vision.”

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