In late 2023, organizers formed the Pharmacy Guild, a union geared specifically toward pharmacy workers, including techs and pharmacists.

The guild was formed after a series of worker walkouts at CVS and Walgreens over unsafe staffing levels and high workloads pharmacy workers said jeopardized patient care. In the first few years of the guild’s existence, it has organized 15 pharmacies with hundreds of members, Chris Eggeman, a CVS pharmacist and leader in the Pharmacy Guild, told Healthcare Brew.

“We’ve grown pretty substantially,” Eggeman said. “We started with a couple stores in Rhode Island, and now it’s a nationwide movement.”

Going national. Pharmacy workers in California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, and Rhode Island have elected to unionize, according to Eggeman. The members include pharmacy professionals at CVS, Walgreens, and grocery store pharmacy chain Safeway as well as those working in hospitals, clinics, specialty pharmacies, and long-term care facilities.

Here’s how the last three years have been going.—MA

Today we’re going to get into two topics that everyone loves to read about.

Of course, we’re talking about GLP-1s and wearables.

On May 27, tech giant Samsung Electronics and Boston academic medical center Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) announced a joint study to see if the company’s Galaxy Watch and Samsung Health app can track muscle loss in adults starting a GLP-1.

We don’t have to tell you that GLP-1s are everywhere. In fact, if you look up from your phone or computer screen right now, you may even see an ad for one, or perhaps you know someone who’s using one. KFF reported that as of last November, 1 in 8 US adults say they’re already using the medications for weight loss.

Read more about the partnership here.—CM

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Merging technology and medical practice has never been easy (see the ongoing plight of electronic health records). Lately, there’s been a new type of technology for clinicians to learn that you may have heard mentioned here and there: AI.

Whether it’s scribes or imaging scanners, providers are being asked more frequently to incorporate AI into their practices. But providers are trained in medicine, not data science.

That’s why on May 19, GE HealthCare launched a new initiative to make 20 hours of healthcare AI training, called HelloAI Professional, at no cost.

Jan Beger, global head of AI advocacy for GE HealthCare, spoke with Healthcare Brew about this new resource and why the medical device company is stepping up to educate clinicians.

“When a clinician gets decision support through AI, they need to understand at least to some extent what AI does in the background,” Beger said. “They don’t need to become data scientists…but they should at least get some glimpse into the decision-making process of the AI model.”

See the full conversation here.—CM