Expanding skills for a future in pharmacy: Vuk Ignjatovic

Second-year pharmacy student Vuk Ignjatovic is always looking for opportunities to build the skills that will set him up for future success in the pharmaceutical industry. So he jumped at the opportunity to participate in a virtual program with Pfizer offered through Extern over the summer.

Ignjatovic completed Pfizer Advanced: AI-Powered Document Insights & Data Extraction Externship, which, he shared, “focuses on building an AI model in Python and related tools to scan documents and extract information based on a user prompt.”

“This is very useful in the regulatory affairs of the pharmaceutical industry because regulatory documents do not usually follow a fixed format and are often long and detailed,” Ignjatovic explained. “I had some knowledge around coding and Python, which was useful, but I learned a whole new world when AI was introduced. I was also unaware of how difficult coding can be in modern times.”

Ignjatovic will continue expanding his skill set beyond what he learns in the classroom and clinics.

“When it comes to pharmacy and industry, my goal is to use my Pharm.D. to assist large patient populations rather than conventional pharmacy I believe my interest lies in helping and healing patients on a larger scale, and my main focus is using AI to do so,” he said. “NEOMED has plenty of opportunities within IPhO [Industry Pharmacists Organization] and AMCP [Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy] student organizations, which gave me a chance to put my Pharm.D. interests into action, as I was not very aware that industry could help my cause prior to my education at NEOMED. I plan to use my leadership positions in these organizations to leverage my expertise towards securing an internship in the industry next summer.”