Conclusion of the Virtual Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Education

A virtual training workshop on the fields of artificial intelligence in pharmacy and pharmaceutical education was concluded at the Faculty of Pharmacy at Damascus, in cooperation with the Digital Center for Skills Development, with the participation of a number of faculty members at the Faculty of Pharmacy from various departments.

The first axis of the workshop focused on the use of artificial intelligence in drug design and development by reviewing how to benefit from artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery processes and reduce costs by predicting appropriate molecular structures. The second axis dealt with the analysis of large clinical data, where participants touched on the importance of artificial intelligence in analyzing clinical data, which contributes to improving the accuracy of diagnoses and health care. Third axis included interactive pharmaceutical education by focusing on how to enhance education through artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and DALL-E 3, and applications that allow the preparation of PowerPoint presentations in innovative and fast ways, which helps faculty members provide interactive and attractive educational content.

Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Dr. Lama Youssef, explained that the aim of the workshop is to highlight the latest applications and innovations in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing role in pharmacy and pharmaceutical education, and to enable faculty members to understand the applications of artificial intelligence and its impact on various fields in pharmacy, such as drug development, clinical data analysis, and advanced teaching methods.

Director of the Digital Center for Skills Development, Dr. Maya Hadeh, an expert at the Francophone Agency in the Middle East (AUF), pointed out that the workshop is being held by the Regional Unit for Digital Education in the Agency’s regional office, within the framework of the training workshops program offered by the Regional Committee of Economic and Academic Experts in the Middle East (CREES), which aims to enhance the digital skills of faculty members at the agency’s member universities.

It is worth noting that the workshop was implemented by Dr. Sandy Rihana, Director of the Technology Transfer Office and Head of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the Faculty of Engineering at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik in Lebanon (USEK), and lasted for 9 days with a total of 20 training hours.