Dr Erica Tong: A trailblazer in pharmacy innovation
Monash alum Dr Erica Tong is currently the Chief Pharmacy Information Officer and Deputy Director of Pharmacy at Alfred Health.
Monash alum Dr Erica Tong completed her BPharm (Hons) in 2003, a Masters of Clinical Pharmacy in 2009, and her PhD in 2020 at Monash. She is currently the Chief Pharmacy Information Officer and Deputy Director of Pharmacy at Alfred Health.
A family affair
Dr Erica Tong has always been surrounded by science. Her parents were both pharmacists who had studied at the Victorian College of Pharmacy.
“I was really into science and had grown up around pharmacists,” Erica says. “My father was Director of Pharmacy at The Alfred, and I chose to complete my high school work experience there.”
After completing her Bachelor of Pharmacy with Honours from Monash in 2003, Erica undertook internships in industry and at The Alfred while also working part-time in community pharmacy.
“I started at The Alfred as an intern in 2003, the year my dad retired, so we only overlapped by a month or so,” Erica says.
“I really liked the multidisciplinary team environment of the hospital”.
Erica progressed from a junior clinical pharmacist role to more senior roles, specialising in general medicine. By 2009, she had been appointed Pharmacy Lead for General Medicine.
“General medicine was an area pharmacists didn’t traditionally specialise in beyond experiencing it as juniors, but I loved it because there were complex patients with multiple comorbidities and multiple medications, and the impact of pharmacists on patient care was significant,” she explains.
Along the way, Erica gained her Master of Clinical Pharmacy from Monash in 2009, and also taught at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Making pharmacy even more of a family affair, Erica’s husband, Peter Doukas, is also a Monash alumnus who completed his BPharm (Hons) with her in 2003 before pursuing a career in medicine in Intensive Care at Monash Health. Erica's sister, Bianca, is also a Monash alum, having completed her BPharm (Hons) in 2004.
A pioneering role
In 2016, Erica’s hospital embarked on a project to digitise clinical documentation and medication management workflows by implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) and she was offered a position as the first Chief Pharmacy Information Officer (CPIO) at The Alfred. At that time, it was groundbreaking, as it was the first CPIO position in Australia.
“Hospitals have changed a lot over the last 20 years,” Erica says. “Medical and Nursing leads for informatics existed, but luckily our executive team also saw the need for a clinical pharmacy informatics lead.”
“We now also have a Chief Clinical Information Officer role for Allied Health”.
Erica says the role entails clinical leadership for informatics to ensure both the content and workflows are safe from a clinical perspective and also user-friendly for clinicians.
“People trust the system is right, and they need to be able to trust it,” she says.
“But these systems must be designed by experts with clinical knowledge and an understanding of clinical risk and clinical workflows,” Erica says. “How you design a system can have an impact on reduction in errors, but you can also build the system to guide clinicians to use the most appropriate therapies.”
In 2016, Dr Erica Tong became the first Chief Pharmacy Information Officer at The Alfred.
After her original appointment in 2016, Erica says more hospitals have followed suit, and there is a small but expanding network of pharmacists around Australia working in the digital space. She has also worked through SHPA (the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia) to try and increase the profile of pharmacists working in informatics.
Erica says there is scope for further growth in the number of CPIO roles available as hospitals transition to digital records and see the value a non-medical IO can provide.
“Some hospitals are still using paper, many are hybrid, or still transitioning,” Erica explains. “Clinical oversight and leadership from pharmacists is important because the highest risk content in electronic medical records is arguably the medications.”
“It’s an exciting area,” she says.
A reputation for innovation
Beyond informatics, Erica has played an integral role in many first-in-country Pharmacy innovations within The Alfred that have since been adopted by other hospitals.
“The Alfred has a culture of innovation, and the supportive leadership and team relationships I’ve built here in my clinical and digital health teams allow me to make an impact,” she says.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work with others to develop innovations that have spread to other hospitals, which means I’ve also had an impact beyond my own workplace”.
In 2018, Erica and her team won the 2018 National Prize for Excellence in Medical Research for their clinical research article: “Reducing medication errors in hospital discharge summaries: a randomised controlled trial.” They also received an award from the Victorian AMA.
“I got to present the results of the trial at both their conferences,” Erica says. “Importantly, I could show that when we work collaboratively as a multidisciplinary team, it can have big impacts on patient care.”
Erica ran a pilot program for pharmacists to chart patient medications when admitted to hospital. Her work towards Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) in Victoria, which sees medical officers and hospital pharmacists collaborate to reduce medication errors, was published in a landmark 2019 study, and funded for expansion by the Victorian Department of Health. This earned Erica the 2020 Australian Clinical Pharmacy Award from SHPA and fed into her PhD at Monash, which she completed in 2020.
“My team has also developed other best-in-Australia innovations, including implementing SafeScript integration within the EMR so it seamlessly checks for alerts and concerns for patient safety at the point of prescribing,” Erica says. “We also managed to roll out paperless e-prescribing via our EMR, which at the time no other hospital had, and now other hospitals can implement it too.”
In 2022, Erica was among 25 women honoured in the Brilliant Women in Digital Health Awards for outstanding achievements and contributions in digital health.
Dr Erica Tong was invited to give the keynote address at the Monash Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science Academic Prize Giving in 2023.
Combining two roles
Erica says she feels fortunate that she can combine clinical pharmacy with the bigger-picture role of being a CPIO.
“I wear two hats every day,” Erica explains. “As Deputy Director of Pharmacy, I have clinical responsibilities and manage my teams in General Medicine, ICU and ED.”
“Then, as Chief Pharmacy Information Officer I have one foot in the digital health space, working alongside the other informatics chiefs, looking at the bigger picture.”
She enjoys the way both roles feed into each other.
“A pharmacist have a great impact on a single patient's care, working on the floor with clinical teams, but I remind my team daily that a single digital health innovation can impact thousands of patients, although the visibility of that impact may be less obvious at that point in time.”
Erica says a lot of the innovations she’s worked on are around broadening the scope of pharmacists to ensure patient safety.
“I’m passionate about that,” she says. “The best innovations are collaborative, where we’re all working in multi-disciplinary teams for the same goal.”
“One challenge as we try to push the boundaries and widen the role of pharmacists is that we also need to look at the hours of pharmacists working in hospitals,” she says.
“Currently, no in-hospital pharmacy service works 24 hours, seven days, yet many of our colleagues - medicine and nursing - do. We know patient outcomes are better when pharmacists are involved in patient care, and pharmacist interactions are increasing in medical emergency teams, stroke calls, sepsis calls and more.”
As Erica’s own career shows, there are many pathways a Pharmacist can take.
“Increasingly, the skillset pharmacists have makes them useful for many different roles in healthcare beyond being a pharmacist,” she explains.
“I have been very lucky to be supported to study part-time, take maternity leave, take on leadership roles, and manage a home life,” Erica says.
“I really enjoy making a difference to patient safety, medication safety and patient care.”
