Unveiling Our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan: The Future of Pharmacy Certification

A Message from the CEO: From Validation to Vision

To our esteemed community of certified professionals, dedicated volunteers, and trusted partners,

The journey of the Council on Pharmacy Standards (CPS) has been one of relentless forward motion. We began with a clear mission: to create a trusted, evidence-based standard for the essential roles that define contemporary pharmacy practice. Together, we navigated a global pandemic, not by pausing, but by innovating, launching remote proctoring and timely new credentials that met the needs of a profession in transformation. We celebrated milestones, welcoming tens of thousands of you into a vibrant national community of recognized experts. With each new portfolio, from Clinical Care to Compliance, we have worked to ensure that every facet of this dynamic profession has a home for validated excellence.

The work of validating the present is a sacred trust, and it will always be at the core of our mission. But leadership demands more than just reflection; it demands foresight. It requires that we lift our gaze from the practice of today and look intently toward the horizon of tomorrow.

Today, we stand at that inflection point. After a year of deep research, extensive stakeholder engagement, and strategic deliberation by our Board of Directors, we are honored to move into the next chapter of our evolution. It is with great excitement that we unveil the CPS 2025-2028 Strategic Plan. This is more than a roadmap; it is our covenant with you and with the future of our profession. This plan will guide our transition from an organization that validates current practice to one that actively anticipates, defines, and shapes the future of pharmacy.

Our vision for the next four years is built upon three transformative pillars:

1. Anticipatory Credentialing: Certifying the Future of Practice Before It Arrives.

2. The Certificant Journey: A Career-Long Partnership in Professional Growth.

3. System-Wide Impact: Integrating Standards into the Fabric of Healthcare.

This is our blueprint for the future.

Pillar 1: Anticipatory Credentialing – Certifying the Future of Practice

For years, the credentialing industry has operated on a reactive model: a practice area matures, a need is identified, and a certification is developed. To truly lead, we must invert this model. The first pillar of our strategic plan is to build an organization that can identify and standardize emerging professional roles as they are forming, providing pharmacists with the tools to lead into the future, not just catch up to it.

Initiative 1.1: The “Horizon Scanning” Research Program To power this forward-looking approach, we are formalizing the creation of a new, dedicated research arm within CPS: the Horizon Scanning Program. This is a permanent, multi-disciplinary intelligence-gathering function tasked with identifying the technological, clinical, and economic forces that will reshape pharmacy practice 3-5 years from now. This team will be responsible for:

• Monitoring FDA & Therapeutic Pipelines: Analyzing trends in drug approvals to anticipate the skills needed to manage novel therapeutic classes, such as cell and gene therapies or prescription digital therapeutics.

• Tracking Health Technology Innovation: Continuously evaluating the impact of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, and automation on pharmacy workflows and clinical decision-making.

• Analyzing New Care and Payment Models: Assessing how the continued shift to value-based care, accountable care organizations, and new integrated practice models will create novel roles for pharmacists.

This program will be our early warning system and our innovation engine, ensuring that the certifications we develop tomorrow are aligned with the practice realities of 2030.

Initiative 1.2: The Next Generation Portfolio – The Pharmacy Informatics & Technology Suite The first fruit of our new anticipatory model is the official greenlighting of our next landmark portfolio. The data is undeniable: the future of pharmacy is inextricably linked with the intelligent use of data and technology. To that end, we are thrilled to announce that development is now fully underway for the Pharmacy Informatics & Technology Suite, slated for a launch in late 2025. This portfolio will create the national standard for the tech-enabled pharmacist and pharmacy leader.

This suite will include:

• Certified AI-Enhanced Pharmacy Strategist (CAEPS): This executive-level certification is for the pharmacy leader who can do more than just use new technology; they can strategically deploy it. The CAEPS will be a validated expert in leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for predictive analytics in population health, optimizing complex supply chains, driving operational efficiency through automation, and implementing advanced clinical decision support systems while managing the profound ethical considerations of AI in healthcare.

• Certified Digital Therapeutics Specialist (CDTS): The era of “prescription digital therapeutics” (PDTs) is here. These FDA-approved, software-as-a-drug therapies for conditions ranging from ADHD to substance use disorder require a new set of skills. The CDTS will be the expert in this new therapeutic class, competent in evaluating the clinical evidence for PDTs, managing their “dispensing” and access through new platforms, and counseling patients on their effective use, engagement, and data privacy.

• Certified Pharmacy Informatics Analyst (CPIA): This credential will recognize the data-driven experts who serve as the bridge between clinical pharmacy and information technology. The CPIA will be a master of the pharmacy information system, capable of extracting, analyzing, and translating vast amounts of data into actionable insights that improve medication safety, workflow efficiency, and clinical outcomes.

• Certified EHR Optimization Pharmacist (CEOP): The Electronic Health Record is the central nervous system of modern healthcare, but it is far from perfect. The CEOP will be the specialist dedicated to the continuous improvement of the EHR’s medication-use functionality. Their expertise will lie in designing safer and more intuitive order sets, building more effective clinical decision support alerts, and optimizing workflows to reduce clicks, combat alert fatigue, and enhance patient safety.

• Certified Population Health Pharmacy Analyst (CPHPA): In a value-based care system, the focus shifts from the individual prescription to the health of an entire patient panel. The CPHPA will be the expert in using data analytics tools to manage this responsibility. Their validated skills will include using patient registries to identify gaps in care, analyzing data to stratify patients by risk, and measuring the clinical and financial impact of pharmacist-led interventions on a population level.

• Certified Pharmacy Data Privacy Officer (CPDPO): As pharmacy becomes more data-intensive, the risks to patient privacy multiply. The CPDPO will be the designated expert in safeguarding protected health information (PHI) within the pharmacy data ecosystem. This certification will validate a deep, working knowledge of HIPAA’s technical safeguards, state-level privacy laws, and the specific security challenges posed by telehealth platforms, patient-facing apps, and third-party data integrations.

Pillar 2: The Certificant Journey – A Career-Long Partnership

Earning a CPS credential is a milestone, not a final destination. The second pillar of our strategic plan is to fundamentally transform the experience of being a certificant. We are moving beyond a transactional relationship of testing and recertifying to create a dynamic, career-long partnership that provides continuous value and support.

Initiative 2.1: The “MyCPS” Professional Development Ecosystem We will build upon our new portal to create a fully integrated professional development ecosystem—a personalized home for your entire career journey. This enhanced “MyCPS” portal will become an indispensable tool for your growth, featuring:

• AI-Powered Learning Pathways: Leveraging the data from your certification profile, the portal’s AI engine will provide personalized recommendations for continuing education, relevant journal articles, and exclusive webinars. It will help you not only meet your recertification requirements but also stay at the absolute forefront of your specialty.

• Career Pathway Navigator: This innovative tool will allow you to explore potential career trajectories. Based on your current credential, it will map out other CPS certifications that align with your goals—for instance, showing a CPOM how earning a CPAS and CPBRS could position them for a Chief Pharmacy Officer role.

Initiative 2.2: The CPS Mentorship Network True professional growth is accelerated through human connection. In 2026, we will launch a formal, opt-in CPS Mentorship Network within our exclusive online community platform. This program will use smart matching to connect experienced, established leaders (our “CPS Fellows”) with newly certified professionals seeking guidance. This will create a powerful, structured mechanism for our most accomplished certificants to give back and for our emerging leaders to learn from the best.

Initiative 2.3: Reimagining Recertification The “one-size-fits-all” model of recertification based solely on CE hours is becoming outdated. Over the course of this strategic plan, we will research and phase in a more holistic and meaningful Continuing Professional Development (CPD) model. This future points-based system will continue to recognize formal CE but will also grant credit for a wider range of professional activities that demonstrate continued competence, such as:

• Mentoring a junior colleague through our new network.

• Volunteering as a CPS Subject Matter Expert.

• Publishing a peer-reviewed article in your specialty.

• Presenting at a state or national conference.

• Completing targeted micro-credentials on new and emerging topics.

This model will better reflect the diverse ways that dedicated professionals stay current and contribute to the profession.

Pillar 3: System-Wide Impact – Integrating Standards into the Fabric of Healthcare

The ultimate measure of our success is not the number of individuals we certify, but the degree to which the standards we represent are integrated into the daily operations of the entire healthcare system. The third pillar of our plan is focused on expanding our influence beyond the individual to drive system-level change.

Initiative 3.1: “Partners in Excellence” 2.0 We will evolve our highly successful health system partnership program. The new model will feature tiered partnership levels (Affiliate, Partner, and Premier), offering a progressively deeper level of integration and benefits. Premier partners, for example, will gain access to anonymized, aggregated data benchmarks, allowing them to compare the competency profiles of their certified staff against national averages. Our ambitious goal is to grow from our current 12 partners to over 50 Premier Health System Partners by the end of 2028, making CPS certification a recognized hallmark of the nation’s top pharmacy departments.

Initiative 3.2: Academic and Educational Alliances We will move from informal outreach to creating formal Academic Alliance programs with the nation’s leading Colleges of Pharmacy and PGY1/PGY2 Residency Programs. These alliances will involve providing curriculum resources that align with our certification blueprints, offering discounted “pathway to certification” programs for graduating residents, and co-developing educational content. This will create a seamless bridge from formal education and training to professional board certification, instilling a culture of excellence from the very beginning of a pharmacist’s career.

Initiative 3.3: A Voice for the Profession – Advocacy and Public Policy A standard that is not recognized by regulators and policymakers has a limited impact. To address this, we will be forming a new Advocacy and Public Policy Committee. This group will be tasked with proactively engaging with state boards of pharmacy, federal agencies like CMS, and legislative bodies. Our goal is to advocate for the formal recognition of certified pharmacy specialists in state and federal regulations, promoting policies that allow highly qualified, certified pharmacists to practice at the top of their license. CPS will become a trusted, data-driven, and non-partisan resource for policymakers seeking to improve patient safety and optimize medication use.

The Journey Ahead: A Shared Future

This strategic plan is ambitious. It is a declaration that we are ready to lead. But it is also a profound act of co-creation. This vision was built from your feedback, inspired by your dedication, and will only be realized through your continued engagement.

Over the next four years, we invite you to join us on this exciting journey. Participate in our research. Lend your expertise as a volunteer. Engage with your peers in our new community. Mentor the next generation. Together, we will do more than just award certifications. We will build a more competent, more innovative, and more impactful profession. We will define the future of pharmacy, together.

The Board of Directors, Council on Pharmacy Standards (CPS)