President's Report Masthead
March 31, 2018

Innovation develops multifaceted partnership with School of Pharmacy

Phil Samples is vice president for professional services for Innovation, a pharmacy automation and process optimization firm in Johnson City, N.Y.

The firm’s website notes that it is ‘helping pharmacies increase efficiency, enhance patient safety and deliver patient-facing care’ – and that message comes across loud and clear from Samples, who serves on the Advisory Board for the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SOPPS) and its Communications and Marketing Committee. He is also a preceptor for the school.

With a PharmD from the University of Georgia, as well as a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy and two master’s degrees, Samples joined Innovation five years ago after nearly four decades as a pharmacist, much of that with the U.S. Air Force.

“I love my profession of pharmacy. I’ve been a pharmacist for 38 years and have never been bored. It has always presented challenges that are fun and rewarding and have spanned all areas – inpatient, outpatient, and teaching hospital clinical coordination,” he said. “I’ve walked all the different aspects of pharmacy that you can walk and this is where I ended up because of my understanding across the board. This company was innovative enough to say we’ve not hired a pharmacist before, so they did and that’s part of the professional services piece of the puzzle we provide.”

Samples and Innovation are strong proponents of SOPPS, and believe they can bring something different to the school – training in an area that pharmacists, to this point, have not received.

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