ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT FLOW DURING THE PROCESS OF WAREHOUSING

Efficiency of flow of goods in pharmaceutical industry is essentiallydetermined by efficient warehousing processes. This causes necessity of use oftechnologies for support of flow of pharmaceutical products, whose specific nature forcesapplication of IT systems which perform, except for standard tasks, some auxiliaryfunctions. This paper presents an overview of the IT systems used in chemistries and listsbenefits which can be derived from application of electronic system of medicine ordering.warehousing process, products flow, EDI

Consumer medicines information : an international perspective

Consumer medicines information is increasingly relied upon to inform and empower consumers regarding their medicines. Legislation and guidelines are now in operation in the US, European Union (EU) countries and Australasia. The lack of an evidence base has led to a variety of approaches to written information provision across the three continents and each has apparent advantages and disadvantages. This review compares consumer medicines information in the three continents and examines the strengths and weaknesses of each system. It also includes an outline of research conducted by Professor Raynor’s team on the impact of the EU legislation. This will be of particular interest in Malta, in view of the imminent membership of the EU.peer-reviewe

Supporting Blind and Visually Impaired Persons in Managing Their Medication.

Various reasons lead to non-adherence to drug therapy, such as forgotten reordering of medications or wrong intake behavior. Blind and visually impaired persons face additional challenges, such as recognizing the medication package or reading the package insert which additionally impacts on patient safety. To address these challenges, we developed a concept for supporting medication management. In the center of the concept is the mobile application MyPills. It reminds on drug intake and reordering. These functionalities are made available to blind and visually impaired persons using screen reader functionalities. The current medication is entered into MyPills using the eMediplan, a Swiss national exchange format for eMedication. Beyond, package inserts are made accessible through voice output. MyPills supports in scanning the global trade item number (GTIN) for medication package identification. A usability tests carried out with six participants including two blind persons showed that users get along well with the app and the functionalities are helpful. In future studies with patients, it should be checked whether the MyPills app can improve compliance with drug therapy and impacts on intake behavior

Evaluation of medication package inserts in Saudi Arabia

Sinaa A Al-aqeelClinical Pharmacy Department, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi ArabiaPurpose: The aim of this study was to examine if package inserts (PIs) supplied with prescribed and over-the-counter medications in Saudi Arabia contain information relevant for the safe and appropriate use of these medications.Methods: Sixty PIs for prescription-only medications (n = 37) and over-the-counter medications (n = 23) were evaluated against a set of safety criteria compiled from the literature.Results: Analyzed PIs were defective in many aspects. Particularly of concern were unclear dosage instructions, lack of measures to be taken when an administrative error was made, inappropriate presentation of side effects, and lack of measures to be taken if serious side effects occurred.Conclusion: This study indicated that information relevant to the safe and appropriate use of medications was not uniformly mentioned in the PIs analyzed. To avoid medication errors due to deficits in the current PIs, we recommend improvement in the existing PIs based on best practice for information content and design.Keywords: drug information, patient education, patient information leaflets, package insert

Listening to Current Practice: Patient Involvement in the Pharmaceutical Packaging Design Process

Multiple functional challenges in the use of pharmaceutical packaging reveal a great need of packaging to be designed inclusively. This study investigates patient involvement in the pharmaceutical packaging design process by analysing interview data from representatives of the pharmaceutical and packaging industry. Four main themes related to patient involvement were uncovered: patient expertise levels, patient involvement modes, factors encouraging patient involvement, and factors discouraging patient involvement. Passive patient involvement modes were found to be dominant due to regulations and a traditional perspective regarding physical testing. However, active patient involvement modes were identified, motivated by empathy and understanding of the lives of patients. The pharmaceutical packaging design process is complex and involves multiple stakeholders. The research findings can inspire more industry practitioners and policymakers to design pharmaceutical packaging that is inclusive and with consideration of a broader spectrum of patients’ needs

Investigating The Impact of Interaction Design on the Delivery of Online Pharmaceutical Courses: Adapting Online Course Graphic Design for Improved Content Retention

In recent years, the use of online courses has emerged as a way to quickly and easily deliver content to large numbers of trainees. In writing these courses, pharmaceutical course developers often use traditional instructional design models and techniques to design course content for online learning. But is this truly enough? Interaction design principles and practices can also be incorporated to increase the quality of learning by improving learner comprehension and retention. Using pharmaceutical content and learners, this research investigated how interaction design impacts online learning by measuring the effect of applying different graphical user interfaces. The results were surprising, as the data showed no significant improvement in retention rates between graphical treatments. However, the incorporation of graphics did slightly improve overall course satisfaction

Stakeholder involvement, motivation, responsibility, communication: How to design usable security in e-Science

e-Science projects face a difficult challenge in providing access to valuable computational resources, data and software to large communities of distributed users. Oil the one hand, the raison d'etre of the projects is to encourage members of their research communities to use the resources provided. Oil the other hand, the threats to these resources from online attacks require robust and effective Security to mitigate the risks faced. This raises two issues: ensuring that (I) the security mechanisms put in place are usable by the different users of the system, and (2) the security of the overall system satisfies the security needs of all its different stakeholders. A failure to address either of these issues call seriously jeopardise the success of e-Science projects.The aim of this paper is to firstly provide a detailed understanding of how these challenges call present themselves in practice in the development of e-Science applications. Secondly, this paper examines the steps that projects can undertake to ensure that security requirements are correctly identified, and security measures are usable by the intended research community. The research presented in this paper is based Oil four case studies of c-Science projects. Security design traditionally uses expert analysis of risks to the technology and deploys appropriate countermeasures to deal with them. However, these case studies highlight the importance of involving all stakeholders in the process of identifying security needs and designing secure and usable systems.For each case study, transcripts of the security analysis and design sessions were analysed to gain insight into the issues and factors that surround the design of usable security. The analysis concludes with a model explaining the relationships between the most important factors identified. This includes a detailed examination of the roles of responsibility, motivation and communication of stakeholders in the ongoing process of designing usable secure socio-technical systems such as e-Science. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Path towards efficient paediatric formulation development based on partnering with clinical pharmacologists and clinicians, a c4c expert group White paper

Improved global access to novel age-appropriate formulations for paediatric subsets, either of new chemical entities or existing drugs, is a priority to ensure that medicines meet the needs of these patients. However, despite regulatory incentives, the introduction to the market of paediatric formulations still lags behind adult products. This is mainly caused by additional complexities associated with the development of acceptable age-appropriate paediatric medicines. This position paper recommends the use of a paediatric Quality Target Product Profile as an efficient tool to facilitate early planning and decision making across all teams involved in paediatric formulation development during the children-centric formulation design for new chemical entities, or to repurpose/reformulate off-patent drugs. Essential key attributes of a paediatric formulation are suggested and described. Moreover, greater collaboration between formulation experts and clinical colleagues, including healthcare professionals, is advocated to lead to safe and effective, age-appropriate medicinal products. Acceptability testing should be a secondary endpoint in paediatric clinical trials to ensure postmarketing adherence is not compromised by a lack of acceptability. Not knowing the indications and the related age groups and potential dosing regimens early enough is still a major hurdle for efficient paediatric formulation development; however, the proposed paediatric Quality Target Product Profile could be a valuable collaborative tool for planning and decision making to expedite paediatric product development, particularly for those with limited experience in developing a paediatric product

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): Physiotherapists' use, knowledge and attitudes

This paper reports on a survey regarding physiotherapists’ knowledge, use and attitudes to non–steroidal anti–inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), some of which have recently been re–scheduled to non–prescription dispensing. A written survey instrument was developed and administered to 750 physiotherapists in South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (50% of the registered physiotherapists). Responses were received from 285 physiotherapists. The survey identified opportunities for patient misuse and misadventures with NSAIDs in conjunction with physiotherapy management. Differences in physiotherapists’ understanding of the dosage and actions of oral and topic administrations of NSAIDs were highlighted, as were the moral and ethical responsibilities of physiotherapists to patients considering taking NSAIDs. The study identified the need for regular professional updates on quality use of NSAIDs