teaser
Hospital pharmacists with an interest in promoting information technology initiatives and best practice could win £2,500 for themselves or their departments, under an award scheme.
According to its sponsors, the 2008 FDBE GHP/UKCPA Information Technology Award is intended to “encourage, support and promote information technology initiatives and best practice in the use of IT in hospital pharmacy”.
Especially, initiatives are sought where IT has made a positive difference to the provision of pharmaceutical services or resulted in direct benefit to the patients or staff. Projects may relate to patient care, clinical services, medicines management, decision support, electronic prescribing or any other IT application that improves pharmaceutical services.
Now in its sixth year, the annual award is sponsored by UK-based drug database and clinical decision support software company First DataBank Europe (FDBE), in association with the UK Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists (GHP) and the UK Clinical Pharmacy Association (UKCPA).
The GHP IT interest group, formed in 2001, established a joint group with UKCPA in 2006. Delegates to the annual joint seminar have an active interest in implementing new technologies to support the clinical pharmacy services.
The 2007 award was won for the second time by the pharmacy department at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), UK.
The project team successfully designed and developed an intranet-hosted formulary management system enabling online access to UCLH’s formulary and drug-related clinical guidelines.
Previous winners comprise: Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK, for an IT system which improved the on-call pharmacy service (2006); UCLH pharmacy department, for creating a solution using IT to manage and electronically store information about clinical trials taking place within the trust (2005); and the pharmacy department at University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool, UK, for its Effective Electronic Transfer of Discharge Prescriptions pilot, which used IT to improve transfer of patient discharge information between the hospital and primary care providers (2004).
Neil Kirby, chair of the GHP UKCPA IT interest group, said: “The entries received over the last five years have been of a very high standard and have demonstrated the positive impact IT can have upon the way pharmacists work and services are delivered. We hope this award will continue to highlight some of the most successful projects and inspire others in the use of information technology.”
The deadline for entries for the 2008 competition is 31 December 2007, and the award will be presented in spring 2008. To apply, see the 2008 award leaflet available on the awards pages at www.ukcpa.org or www.ghp.org.uk.
FDBE press release 11/6/2007
