WHAT INNOVATION MEANS TO PHARMACISTS

WHAT INNOVATION MEANS TO PHARMACISTS

Community pharmacy is recognised for its willingness to adopt new, innovative technologies and strategies in its mission to provide the highest standard of pharmacy and health care services to the Australian community.

Whether those innovations are technological, systematic or strategic in nature, pharmacists and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia have developed the necessary infrastructure and culture to implement innovation quickly and in such a way as to deliver significant benefits to the public.

Pharmacy presents a complex and everchanging landscape in which the Guild and its members must successfully navigate. New medicines, advances in IT and other technologies, shifting demographics and constantly changing community expectations require pharmacy to embrace innovative measures to keep up with public demands.

Recent innovations include the ongoing development of a national database that will provide greater scope for utilising health information for the benefit of the patient.

Another is Project STOP, an online recording and reporting system that gives pharmacists, police and health authorities real time access to a database of suspicious pseudoephedrine reports, which will help block illegitimate access for the purposes of creating illegal - not to mention dangerous - amphetamines.

From a health care point of view, there is widespread agreement about the merits of a national electronic health information system, where information is seamlessly shared among pharmacists, prescribers, Medicare Australia and with the main beneficiaries of such a system - consumers.

The Guild shares this vision with government and other stakeholders, although questions of how to best implement that vision remains an ongoing challenge, which we are working with others to ensure the right outcome.

Kieran Schneeman, chief executive officer,
Pharmacy Guild of Australia

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