Celebrating excellence: Meet the 2026 Pharmacy Practice + Business Award winners
Even though each year seems to presents the pharmacy profession with significant challenges, these challenges also offers countless new opportunities for individuals and groups to find creative new solutions and opportunities to thrive. At least that's what one could surmise after looking through the entries for each year's Pharmacy Practice + Business Awards.
Once again, reading through the dozens of entries and nominations for this year's awards, it's obvious that there are countless Canadian pharmacists and pharmacy technicians doing excellent, creative and impactful work to improve patient care, fill systemic gaps or develop new sources of revenue,
I sympathize with the pharmacists who volunteer to review and rank the entries. Because, while it's inspiring to read each person's story, it can be difficult to decide which entries deserve to rise to the top. And the level of excellence, innovation and exceptional care among Canadian pharmacy professionals continues to increase, year after year.
Here's how the process works: More than 50 individuals or teams entered or were nominated for an award in one of our seven award categories. Our panel of six judges reviewed all entries and were asked to rate each entry by three judging criteria (innovation, contribution to the community and impact). The entries with the highest total scores in each category were declared the winners.
This year's panel of six judges included: Ian Lloyd, Alan Low, Graham MacKenzie, Tim Smith, Don Swainson and Molly Yang We are so grateful to them for taking the task seriously and devoting hours of their time to reviewing and ranking each entry.
This year's winners include: A pharmacy academic who has created a role for pharmacists in the area of neurocritical care and epilepsy and seizure treatment; a community pharmacy team whose business model is built on specific specialty primary care "hubs;" a team that has helped to incorporate psychopharmacology into the care offerings of a children's rehab hospital; a young pharmacist and educator who has facilitated the addition of pharmacy-led education into health-related programs for vulnerable and at-risk patient communities; a long-term pharmacy company that has baked-in emergency planning measures and procedures to ensure that patients continue to receive their medications in cases of natural disaster or emergencies; a pharmacy technician who has developed a learning tool that enables practitioners to hone their counselling, communication and problem-solving skills, and an Alberta pharmacist-owner who not only has become a high profile media expert on public health topics but has also founded a national platform designed to encourage women pharmacists in their journey to entrepreneurship.
We congratulate all of this year's winners and hope you'll be inspired by their stories, which you can read on our awards page.
Who's next?
It's never too early to think about entering the Pharmacy Practice + Business Awards. If reading these stories makes you think of someone you know who’s deserving of an award (including perhaps, yourself?), you can sign up to be notified when the entry process opens for 2026 by filling out this form.