KLE University’s College of Pharmacy, Belgaum and the Raghavendra Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (RIPER), Anantapur, have together embarked on an initiative called as ‘ACCESS 2012’ to expand clinical pharmacy services for the benefit of other pharmacy institutions.

The programme ACCESS 2012 was adopted in response to discussion between two pharmacy institutions. The main objectives of this programme was to orient participants in practical aspects of clinical pharmacy and also to impart training for better clinical exposure in par with excellence.

ACCESS 2012 was designed to focus on the current status and need for expansion of clinical pharmacy services for better patient care. The key modules covered were hospital pharmacy management, drug information, patient counselling, pharmacovigilance and clinical research.

“India will need a strong pool of medical writers to communicate the outcome of the pharmaceutical and medical technology developments. The demand comes in by the increasing number of assignments in clinical research. The big advantage for India is the vast English speaking qualified work force,” according to both KLEU and RIPER.

Pharmacy candidates are the most-sought after for this assignment because of their aptitude for understanding medicine and health sciences. This calls for the need to have a dedicated training to help candidates keen to pursue medical writing as a profession. An important requirement includes the ability to communicate effectively, identify audience’s needs ability to gather and integrate data, analyze and interpret the information, stated Dixon Thomas, Professor and Head, from RIPER, Anantapur.

In addition, medical writing training will focus on literature searches, simplify complex concepts, manage time, meet deadlines and master new software programmes. In fact, there are clinical research organizations, hospitals and pharma majors looking for clinically-relevant  research background candidates with a having publication record, peer-review/journal involvement, added Dixon.

Delving into the issue of Medication Therapy Assessment & Management, Thomas said that implementation & monitoring of the care plan were important in clinical services. In this regard, he called for a Pharmacist’s Care Plan which would clearly outline each drug-related problem providing details of all potential drug-related problems. The Plan would also be a recommendation of additional healthcare services from which the patient may benefit, and identification of appropriate risk factor reduction and disease prevention strategies.

Addressing  on the issue of supply chain management, Prof. M S Ganachari, Professor & Head, Department of Pharmacy Practice, KLE University, Belgaum, said that only organized and systematic distribution would benefit not just the company but pharmacies and patients. In clinical services, supply chain management was also a critical component.