Abstract: A centralized pharmacy validates a drug prescribed by a physician for a patient to ensure that the prescribed drug is a safe and cost effective treatment for the patient. The centralized pharmacy accesses the medical history of the patient, drug information of the prescribed drug, the insurance health plan purchased by the patient, as well as drug abuse information. The centralized pharmacy performs the validation process using the accessed information. If the centralized pharmacy successfully validates the prescribed drug, the centralized pharmacy physically dispatches the prescribed drug to the patient. Alternatively, if the centralized pharmacy determines that the prescribed drug fails the validation process, the centralized pharmacy can identify an alternate drug and validates the alternate drug. Therefore, the centralized pharmacy can automatically replace the prescribed drug with a more appropriate, alternate drug and can dispatch the alternate drug to the patient.