Alan Thompson’s (BSPS ’87) career has included drug safety surveillance, pharmacy information systems, and clinical pharmacy practice, and has spanned corporate, clinical, and consulting settings.

His career began at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, IN, where he spent more than a decade. Starting as a staff pharmacist, most of Alan’s early time at Ball Memorial was spent dispensing and managing the IV Room. With experience, he became involved in clinical services such as pharmacokinetic dosing and the nutritional support team. Later, he managed pharmacy’s computer systems, overseeing the implementation and maintenance of pharmacy-related software.

After leaving Ball Memorial, Al worked in several positions over the next few years, including:

• Senior Consultant for DAOU–RHI, Inc., a nationwide healthcare IT consulting firm, where he traveled to client sites and advised inpatient pharmacy departments on process improvement and computer system implementation.
• Preferred Pharmacists, a company that provided temporary pharmacists to address staffing shortages.
• NCS Healthcare, a company that served long-term care and psychiatric institutions.

The second half of Alan’s career was at Eli Lilly corporate offices in downtown Indianapolis. He started as a drug safety contractor, entering adverse event reports into the safety database. After 6 months, he was hired as a drug safety surveillance associate within the company’s global pharmacovigilance organization, performing proactive safety monitoring of Lilly products, preparing periodic regulatory reports, responding to drug safety inquiries, and supporting complex database searches.

The organization needed an individual with computer system experience, so he moved into a role of business liaison, providing leadership and expertise for the technologies and processes that support the management of global drug safety data. Duties included working with business partners to guide system development, standardized data outputs, and ensure user training and support.

The initiatives Alan led were centered around improving the efficiency of the individuals in the organization by developing standardized system outputs and processes for routine safety surveillance, helping present data in clearer and more user-friendly ways. This effort included a project to incorporate Tableau data visualization into routine surveillance work, enhancing both efficiency and analytical clarity through visually driven dashboards.

Early in his career, Alan’s side hustles included serving as a consulting pharmacist for an outpatient surgery center in Indianapolis, conducting quarterly compliance inspections and providing drug information support. He also served as an externship coordinator for the Purdue College of Pharmacy, visiting students during their experiential rotations.

Beyond his professional work, Alan supports Purdue Athletics as a member of the John Purdue Club and has season tickets for football, volleyball, and men’s and women’s basketball. A lifelong dog lover, he has a 5-year-old chocolate lab, Hershey, and has had many golden retrievers over the years.