Patient counselling centre (PCC) at KEM Hospital, Mumbai has been able to serve the drug regimen compliance requirements of around 1,800 diabetics over the past six months since it was set up in line with Pharmacy Practice Regulations 2015. The regulations came into effect in January 2015.

The centre which caters to around 35 patients on a daily basis also has been addressing the drug-compliance needs of patients suffering from neurological disorders like epilepsy among others.

KEM Hospital and Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council (MSPC) had jointly set up the first of its kind PCC in Maharashtra in January this year to help patients get the know-how about rational usage of scheduled drugs with help from a dedicated pharmacist appointed by the MSPC as a step towards emphasizing the role of pharmacists in patient safety at the point of care.

This according to the MSPC officials will dispel a lot of misconceptions with regards to medical prescription, adverse drug reactions, drug usage, dosage and time schedule for patient safety.

As per the newly introduced system, patient is guided to submit the stamped prescription at the centre which he gets from the physician at the hospital after thorough and proper investigations. The pharmacist at the centre registers the patient's records and accordingly counsels him on drug usage based on the prescription with help from a Micromedex database on medicines.

This has also given patients respite from the long arduous schedule of visiting the OPD, clinic, lab for investigations and finally to the dispensary which entails a lot of paperwork and stress.  

The centre is equipped with a robust evidence based clinical reference software called Micromedex which is user-friendly and makes available evidence-based drug information and clinical answers much faster and easier.

Says Sheetal Chandan, pharmacist and co-ordinator at the centre, "Oriented towards the patient’s drug regimen compliance need, the centre takes care about drug use and aspects like drug-drug reaction, drug-food reaction and other contraindications. This will further strengthen the process of delivering clinically important, relevant and unbiased information on medicines to pharmacist and patients.”

“With the coming up of the centre with pharmacists deputed from MSPC and KEM Hospital, patients will be guided on using the prescription in a practical and rationale way so that medicines are consumed properly to give the desired therapeutic effects,” Chandan concludes.

The centre caters to patients per day from Monday to Saturday between 9 AM to 4 PM.

In order to deliver clinically relevant information on drugs, the concept of drug information centre (DIC) started with 21 DICs in the country. After launching of Pharm D courses in India during 2008-2009, each college in India started gearing up towards setting up DIC and the number of DICs in the country gradually reached the figure of around 100 or so. But very few of them are working effectively as of today.

Reason experts attributes is they are inclined more towards academic information and not into delivering clinically relevant information and details.