Making the most of medicines
Locally we have a team of Pharmacists who work to help us get the best out of medicines for our population. This team is called the Medicines Optimisation Team.
Medicines Optimisation is about helping patients and health professionals to make the right treatment choices and use them as intended and support the management of long‑term conditions, multimorbidities and polypharmacy.
We use an evidence based approach to choosing prescription products which balances the safety, effectiveness, value and ease of use. When decisions are made the discussions involve GPs, Consultants, Pharmacists and Patients, and the governance for this falls under the Medicines Optimisation Board (MOB). The MOB will review new medicine applications, formulary and traffic light status. Sometimes the decisions can be difficult and we have to make recommendations that involve changes to treatments or focusing their use only to those who with benefit most but the overall aim is to get the biggest improvement in health for the most people with the resources that we have.
The list below gives you some examples of things that come under Medicines Optimisation – although there are many more:
Overall, our aim is to improve the health of the local population by promoting safe, effective and efficient use of medicines.