Activating Pharmacists to reduce medication related problems

Overview:

Medicines are a common and often effective way to manage health conditions. However, serious problems related to medicine use can cause unplanned hospital visits and life-threatening health problems. Research shows that in Australia every year 250,000 people are admitted to hospital and 400,000 people visit emergency departments due to serious medication-related problems. Problems occur for a number of reasons including: i) short appointment times with doctors and pharmacists; ii) visiting more than one GP or pharmacy; iii) having to take a high number of medicines to manage chronic illness; and iv) GP and pharmacy records not being linked.

ACTMed is a new service designed to proactively find and address medicine problems before they cause harm. Participating pharmacists will use a specially designed software program (ACTionable Medication safety dashboard) that works within health IT systems to detect medicines problems.  Data will be extracted using GRHANITE software from GP practices. ACTMed works by bringing pharmacists, clients and GPs together to deal with medicine problems. Pharmacists can be working in the health service or in a community pharmacy near the health service. In the ACTMed trial, we want to find out if the ACTMed service reduces hospital visits and if it is suitable for clients, health services and pharmacists.

Outputs:

As of 13/06/2024

• The clinical indicators have been presented to the ACTMed Steering Committee.
• A protocol manuscript has been prepared and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal (currently under review).
• Dr Andrew Donald has written and is about to submit a manuscript about the nominal group process used to identify the clinical indicators used in the trial.

Publications:

• Donald A, Ellis N, Chen E, Violette R, Nissen L, Spinks J. Clinical indicator prioritisation for the ACTMed trial: a modified nominal group technique approach for primary care research in the electronic age. Aust J Prim Health. 2026 Feb 6;32(1):PY25064. DOI: 10.1071/PY25064 PMID: 41376252.