You can subscribe to receive the EAHP EU Monitor by email here [1]. [1]
A major talking point of last month’s Congress of the EAHP in Barcelona was the future roles and competencies for hospital pharmacists in the year 2020 and beyond. Drawing from the keynote speech of Dr. Roberto Frontini on Thursday 27th March, attendees debated the extent to which the future hospital pharmacist must more thoroughly adopt ‘social competencies’ in order to effectively communicate with increasingly health literate patients.
More information here [2].
The European Parliament recently approved [3], by a large majority (547 in favour and 17 against), plans to overhaul the rules for submitting, assessing and reporting clinical trials across EU Member States.
The new Clinical Trials Regulation stipulates that information from Clinical Study Reports of trials should not generally be considered commercially confidential and will:
The European Commission has published a useful summary of the new Regulation here [4].
Shortly after the final vote in the European Parliament on the new regulation, it became know that a court case against the European Medicines Agency on the issue of trial result transparency was dropped. More information here [5].
On 11 April 2014, the European Commission published a series of reports by the eHealth Stakeholder Group (eHSG), an advisory group of which EAHP was an active member.
The reports related to:
The report on eHealth interoperability is connected to the European Commission’s operational objective, set out in its eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020 [6], to achieve wider interoperability of ehealth services by the end of 2015. The principal recommendations from the stakeholder group to the Commission included:
On patient access to the electronic health records, the stakeholders recommended that:
The report on ehealth inequalities looked at the concern that the rise of ehealth applications may have an unintended consequence of increasing health inequalities. Stakeholders believed that the speed of change, the costs involved in accessing and upgrading the required hardware/software and devices and various barriers related to insufficient knowledge, skills and literacy, lack of user-friendliness and doubts over the meaningfulness of information can all present the possibility of new health inequalities.
However, if directed appropriately, ehealth could also address inequalities. Sweden is held up in the report as a good case study, with its national strategy on eHealth including provisions on ‘’eServices for accessibility and empowerment’’. Another good case study identified is the practice in Danish hospitals of providing interpretation services via video conferencing, which is particularly useful for migrants unfamiliar with Danish medical culture and treatments.
The report recommends:
The report on telemedicine, advised the Commission to clearly differentiate two types of telemedicine services:
The latter is seen as the more disruptive technology of two, challenging health care organization, professional roles and reimbursement rules. The report’s recommendations include:
More information about all 4 reports is available here [7].
EAHP would like to convey its thanks to Leonidas Tzimis and Jacqueline Surugue for their contributions to this work.
A variety of media reports from the 19th Congress of the EAHP are now available at www.eahp.eu [8].
From Spanish, UK and Italian media outlets they include interviews with leading EAHP personalities on topical issues and coverage of some of the key seminars on topics such as the future of hospital pharmacy education, and the growing prevalence of medicines shortage problems in Europe.
More information here [9].
The results of a study into the risk of incompatibilities in parenteral drugs in a cardiovascular intensive care unit have been published in the online first version of the European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy [10].
The study authors analysed the physical and chemical compatibility of seven commonly used analgesics and sedatives in order to determine whether these drugs can be administered by the same intravenous line.
The seven investigated were: Clonidine hydrochloride, 4-hydroxybutyric acid, (S)-ketamine hydrochloride, lormetazepam, midazolam hydrochloride, piritramide and sufentanil citrate.
More information here [11].
Links
[1] http://www.eahp.eu/newsletter/subscribe
[2] http://www.eahp.eu/press-room/eahp-19th-congress-looks-future-hospital-pharmacist-2020
[3] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140331IPR41186/html/Clinical-trials-clearer-rules-better-protection-for-patients
[4] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-254_en.htm
[5] http://www.alltrials.net/2014/pharmaceutical-company-abbvie-drops-its-case-against-the-ema/
[6] http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/ehealth-action-plan-2012-2020-innovative-healthcare-21st-century
[7] http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/commission-publishes-four-reports-ehealth-stakeholder-group
[8] http://www.eahp.eu
[9] http://www.eahp.eu/news/19th-congress-eahp-post-congress-news#
[10] http://ejhp.bmj.com/content/early/recent
[11] http://ejhp.bmj.com/content/early/2014/04/04/ejhpharm-2014-000444.full