Compounding provides an innovative way for pharmacists to customize medications according to the patients’ needs. The art of compounding utilizes modern medicine while still upholding the pharmacy profession’s roots.

The U.S. Pharmacopeia Convention (USP) defines compounding as the “preparation, mixing, assembling, altering, packaging, and labeling of a drug, drug-delivery device, or device by a licensed practitioner’s prescription, medication order, or initiative based on the practitioner/patient/pharmacist/compounder relationship in the course of professional practice.”

From such a definition, one can deduce that compounding pharmacies can produce unique dosage forms based on patient preferences or restrictions like dye-free, preservative-free, alcohol-free, or sugar-free forms of medications. Many of these medications are specialized pharmaceutical combinations or compounded in a form that is not commercially available.