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May 2010 Pharmacy Research Events

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	Con Berbatis articles by this author...
Con Berbatis is a pharmacy researcher attached to Curtin University in Western Australia. For i2P, he identifies Australian and global research reports that may be useful for pharmacists to include in their own planning initiatives.

Two important research events for Australian pharmacy occurred on 26 May 2010.

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NOPSAD Statistics 2009.

Each year the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare produces National Opioid Pharmacotherapy Statistics Annual Data (NOPSAD) collection. In May the AIHW released  the 2009 data collated from each state. ¹

The findings most relevant to pharmacy were as follows.

Figure 1.  Total opioid pharmacotherapy clients in Australia, New South Wales  and Western Australia annually from 1998 to 2008

• At 30 June 2009, there were 43,445  receiving pharmacotherapy for opioid dependence in Australia (Figure 1)
• Since 2006 70% of clients have  received pharmacotherapy in the form of methadone and  the balance received buprenorphine or buprenorphine / naloxone
• Pharmacies provide 85% of Australia ‘s  total of 2,157 pharmacotherapy dosing point sites
• In 2009 , 36% of Australia’s  pharmacies  dosed pharmacotherapy clients
• 45-50%  of registered WA and SA pharmacies have dosed pharmacotherapy clients from 2006-2009  representing the highest proportions of pharmacies  in jurisdictions.

Figure 2. 2006-2009. Percentage of registered pharmacies  dosing pharmacotherapy treatment  yearly by jurisdiction (Source : AIHW, NOPSAD, 2010)

NMS 2010 .

The National Prescribing Service Ltd’s  National Medicines Symposium opened in the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre  and continued to 28 May. ²

This event has become a two-yearly forum  for  Australia’s leading pharmacy practice and therapeutics researchers from universities, the pharmaceutical industry and .professional groups.

NMS 2010 luminaries included Professor Emeritus Lloyd Sansom AO, the chair of the  Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee since 2001, the University of Sydney Faculty of Pharmacy’s Professor Andrew McLachlan the president of the Australian Pharmaceutical Sciences Association (APSA),  the University of Queensland’s Dr Lisa Nissen, the national vice president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) , DR Lynn Weekes , CEO of the National Prescribing Service (NPS), Dr Danielle Stowasser the chair of the NMS Scientific Program Committee , Julie Seifert the executive director of the Australian Self-Medication Industry and Mary Hemming the  long-serving CEO of Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd  , a 1980s president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA).

Pharmacy  stamped its prominence well before the symposium’s  opening at 4pm . From 130pm, the Sansom Institute’s  Associate Professor Libby Roughead  in the , School of Pharmacy at the University of South Australia chaired the workshop program ‘Measuring the impact of medicines policy and practice on drug utilisation, costs and health’. The two-hour session featured world-class research into the Quality use of Medicines . Dr Roughead is also a member of the  Drug Utilisation Sub Committee (DUSC) appointed by  the Department of Health and Aged Care.

The four speakers were led by Guy B Marks, the head of the Epidemiology Group in the  Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. His group’s work on ‘Use of PBS data for monitoring asthma’ set the scene for some exciting insights into pharmaco-epidemiological research of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme prescriptions in Australia. ³

DUSC’s Louise Bartlett gave remarkable insight into the prevalence of duplicated and co-prescribing  associated with the product  ‘Caduet’ (atorvastatin and amlodipine) in the same and separate PBS prescriptions in Australia. The study signalled the opportunity  of directly contacting  both doctors who had prescribed questionable PBS  medicines and patients who had received them, by their Medicare number. This process of external intervention preserved anonymity while allowing the prescriber to readily identify the patient and medicines .

Katrina Loukas, the NPS’ Program Evaluation Officer in Sydney,  followed with her presentation  entitled ‘ Time series analysis on PBS data’. The work  assessed the impact of the NPS’ Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) interventions  on the numbers of PBS prescriptions dispensed for Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) in Australia during 2005t and 2006.

Dr Lyn Colvin of the University of Western Australia’s School of Population Health showed the unique use of linked databases in the state. Her presentation , ‘Pharmacovigilance in pregnancy using linked data’ , showed the methods developed   to find associations between  drugs and  teratogenic (birth defects) in the state’s population.

The outstanding developments  in the 2008 and 2010 NMS symposia have been the initiatives produced in communications with prescribers, patients and pharmacists performed in the Veterans Affairs (VA)  MATES Project, run by the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, Sansom Institute, University of South Australia  led by  its Director  Professor  Dr. Andrew Gilbert .

Professor Gilbert accepted the NPS’ 2008 national research award based on the studies stemming from the Project. I spoke to members of the team and they directed me to  the ongoing material in the VA MATES websites. ⁴

The works probably represent world-best contemporary models of specifically improving prescriber, pharmacists  and consumer use of medicines in primary care .

The research references which support their usage will be most useful for reference by local and overseas students. ⁴

References.

1. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. National Opioid Pharmacotherapy Statistics Annual Data collection: 2009 report. Bulletin 79 , May 2010. At : http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/aus/125/11417.pdf . Accessed May 31 2010.
2. National Prescribing Service (NPS) . 2010 National Medicines Symposium. Medicines in people's lives.  Melbourne 26-28 May 2010. At :http://www.nms2010.org.au/ . Accessed 31 May 2010
3. Australian Centre for Asthma Monitoring Patterns of Asthma Medication use in Australia.
   AIHW cat.no.ACM 11. Canberra:Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. May 2007.
   http://www.asthmamonitoring.org/PDF/07_PBS_report.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2010.
4. VA MATES Project websites. Accessed May 31 2010.
   https://www.veteransmates.net.au/VeteransMATES/VeteransMATESServlet?page=index  = The Homepage of Therapeutic briefs for Prescribers), brochures ( VA patients)
   https://www.veteransmates.net.au/VeteransMATES/documents/Publications.pdf -  Research publications
   https://www.veteransmates.net.au/VeteransMATES/documents/RACGP_ACRRM_CPD.pdf - VA medical CE - clinical audits
   https://www.veteransmates.net.au/VeteransMATES/documents/Pharmacy_CPD.pdf  - VA pharmacy CE - PSA, SHPA, AACP (Continuing Professional Development and Practice Improvement (CPD&PI) Program)
   https://www.veteransmates.net.au/VeteransMATES/documents/About_Veterans_MATES.pdf - VA MATES project

Con Berbatis

School of Pharmacy
Curtin University of Technology (Western Australia).

June 2010.

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