The Keele Centre for Medicines Optimisation within the School of
Pharmacy is pleased to announce the appointment of Jonathan Underhill as
Medicines Optimisation Lead. Jonathan will be working 2 days a week while
continuing his role as Associate Director Medicines Evidence within the NICE
Medicines and Prescribing Centre. This appointment strengthens the excellent
working relationship between Keele and NICE and provides an opportunity to
enhance the support the Centre offers to its customers.
Jonathan is a pharmacist who has worked for over 15 years in prescribing
support and was instrumental in developing the highly successful therapeutic
educational programme of the former National Prescribing Centre. He said “implementing
National guidance at a local level remains a huge challenge for prescribing
teams within CCGs and trusts. The networks to support this have been eroded in
many areas and there is a real need for high quality educational support for
prescribing teams. We know from our work on evidence-informed decision making
what helps implement evidence into practice, but we need to develop
interventions that help people put that into practice. We found at NPC that
sharing good ideas and collaborating with others is key to producing
demonstrable results.”
Prof Steve Chapman who is Deputy Head of the
School of Pharmacy / Head of Medicines Optimisation & Enterprise said
“supporting people to deliver the medicines optimisation challenges around poor
adherence, medicines related hospital admissions, medication errors across
primary and secondary care and in care homes, as well as the level of medicines
waste is a key objective of the Centre. Jonathan and I have a shared vision
around how we can help prescribing teams meet these challenges and deliver the
care that their patients deserve. We will review our business plan in consultation
with our stakeholders to ensure the service we offer meets their needs and is
scalable nationally and globally.”
Dr
Paul Chrisp, Programme Director at the NICE Medicines and Prescribing Centre said “I am delighted to
support Jonathan’s academic placement at Keele. This gives NICE and Keele an
excellent opportunity to collaborate on our shared goals around Medicines Optimisation
and implementation of best practice.”
About the Keele Centre for Medicines
Optimisation
Keele Centre for Medicines Optimisation is a not-for-profit organisation based
at Keele University in the School of Pharmacy,
providing tailored, cost-effective, prescribing support solutions to the NHS.
With nearly 20 years experience in delivering medicines
management solutions and optimising medicines use, our
services include:
- Prescribing data analysis (primary and secondary care)
- Quality Outcome Framework achievement data
- Secondary
care outpatient and inpatient episode statistics
- Clinical
evaluation (critical appraisal) services
- Medicines
optimisation support materials
- Medicines
optimisation strategic action planning
- Mapping and spatial
analysis of health related data sets
Working with GPs, commissioners
and local medicines management teams, we offer a wide range of medicines
management services, from user-friendly, affordable, prescribing summaries for
an individual practice right through to a comprehensive service, providing
comparative prescribing data and action planning for a cluster of healthcare
providers.
"Our aim is to encourage high-quality, evidence-based
prescribing, to achieve the best care for patients. We pride ourselves on
providing a responsive service that reflects current, key policy drivers, such
as QIPP."
We work alongside GPs, CCGs,and
hospital trusts and believe that outsourcing prescribing support activities to
Keele offers healthcare providers a practical, cost-effective and, importantly,
flexible option, as medicines management services are reconfigured.
Examples of our work are available on this site (take a look at
the "Open
Access Materials" area) and we'd also recommend reading the feedback from our existing customers
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