A significant new report on the lifecycle of medicines in the UK calls for an overhaul of the system to enable more accessible care.
The report, Better Medicines: Public and Professional Views on the Lifecycle from Discovery to Taking Medicines, offers insight from professional healthcare personnel and patients with lived experience.
The medicines lifecycle incorporates all stages of medicines from development through to regulation and licensing, prescribing, and patient usage. This is the first piece of work to bring together perspectives from all of these groups.
The project was a collaboration by Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Liverpool and the social research agency Hopkins van Mil. It was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council.
One of the key issues that the report highlighted was the relationship between patient and GP shifting to patient and pharmacist.
Since Covid, it has been harder to get GP appointments for many people. This has led to the long-term relationship and familiarity between a patient and their GP shifting into a limited relationship between a patient and their pharmacist or a patient and their district nurse. The report has illustrated that patients, GPs and pharmacists have all stated that with a more integrated system, the sole responsibility of building a relationship with patients could be taken off GPs and shared between GPs, pharmacists and district nurses.
Another key issue was the mismatch between medical trials and the reality of people who will take the medicines. Many medical trials specifically request participants who are not on any other drugs but the report illustrates that this is not the reality for people who will end up on these medications. Many patients were worried about the long-term effects of being on several different medications.
Alison Pilnick, Professor of Language, Health and Society at Manchester Metropolitan University, and co-lead for the project said: “Stakeholders from all the groups involved in our research have valuable ideas about how we can bring about more meaningful public involvement in the medicines lifecycle, increase inclusivity in medicines research and provide better public access to medicines information.
“They also recognise that a major obstacle to better medicines use in the UK is the fact that current systems are not designed to support transition across care settings or to allow multiple professionals to have input. While not all problems have a technological solution, this is one key area where technological improvements could bring about positive change.”
