By Paul Myres, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners in Wales

They may be different professions working in different places on the high street but there is one thing that unites GPs and pharmacists: a belief that patients in Wales are put at risk by failures in communication and understanding between health professionals – failures arising from outmoded systems and silo thinking. Read more »

By Rachel Airley, EPB Board member and Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology

Thanks to the availability of pet insurance, more and more pet owners are able to get access to ever more sophisticated treatments, offering hope that for our furry friends diseases once considered untreatable will no longer be a death sentence.

Like humans, dogs and cats may develop cancer- in particular, bone, breast and skin cancers, as well as blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukaemia. The human and animal versions of the disease share similar characteristics so this has led to vets specialising in cancer to wonder whether research into the development of cancer treatment for use in naturally occurring veterinary cancers may give us important information about the way cancers work. This could turn out to be an important stepping stone for developing new anticancer drugs for use in humans. Read more »

By Jonathan Simms, Clinical Director of Pharmacy, Aneurin Bevan Health Board

Aneurin Bevan Health Board launched a campaign at the end of January this year as part of an initiative to raise awareness of medicine waste, how medicines are wasted and the part that patients and the public can play in helping to reduce this waste.

Medicines play an important part in promoting well-being, preventing ill-health and managing disease.  However, few of us think about the medicines that we waste, how they are disposed of, or how much they cost. Read more »

By Neal Patel, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Head of Corporate Communications

Throwing away medicines rather than using them as intended is a huge problem.

At time when the NHS is having to find £20 billion pounds worth of savings it’s absolutely right that we should all focus on areas on efficiency which feel like (financial) gain with very little, (service loss) pain.

The York Health Economics Consortium, and The School of Pharmacy, University of London, founds that in England in 2009 NHS primary and community care prescription medicines waste cost £300 million.

That is a lot of hip operations. Read more »

By Dr Anthony R Cox, Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy University of Birmingham

This week David Cameron set out plans to open up NHS data, by making the sharing of NHS patient data for research the default position within the NHS. This initiative will save lives.

The focus of the media has been on the ability of the pharmaceutical industry to exploit the data for profit, and with modern day cynicism about the industry & concern about current NHS reforms it isn’t surprising to see this painted as an attempt to “privatize” the NHS. Others are concerned about the confidentiality of the data, in part fed by the same campaigners who opposed the now scrapped ID card. Read more »

By Iain Brotchie, Head of External Relations (Scotland) at Royal Pharmaceutical Society

At the last Scottish Parliament election in May, over 40% of the MSPs who were elected had never served in the Parliament before. For many of them, there is low awareness of what pharmacy does these days beyond dispensing. Other services on offer, and other sectors of the profession, are a mystery to many of the new intake. Read more »