Improving patient adherence

With the introduction of the New Medicines Service (NMS) last week, the Government have demonstrated their belief that it is worth paying pharmacists to personally interact on a structured basis with patients who are newly prescribed medicines in 4 defined clinical areas: Asthma, T2 Diabetes, Hypertension and anti-coagulation. Yet, with one exception, UK branded medicines manufacturers have not so far ever seen fit to invest in their own high value  products  to improve patient adherence in such a way.

For those companies with a significant presence in the 4 NMS therapy areas, the need to invest now to augment and sustain the uptake of their innovations is perhaps not great.

However, there are many companies with few if any products in the 4 NMS therapy areas. Such companies will gain no direct benefit from the NMS at this time. It is my suggestion that there is nothing in principle however to stop more enterprising companies supporting a particular brand, in a similar way to NMS, by funding pharmacy directly to conduct activities similar to NMS. Indeed as the envisaged activity would be very product specific, professional pharmacist support materials and protocols could easily be developed, as could effective communication mechanisms between the pharmacies involved and the pharma company concerned.

Of course, it is the practicalities of such things that can tangle up the achievement of the desired results. It is in that area that I believe that organisations like my own can work collaboratively and pragmatically with pharma clients for the benefit of their products, patients and of course pharmacists.