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The International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) has capped off its Centennial Congress in Amsterdam, a week-long event co-hosted by the Royal Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy (KNMP). Over 5500 participants convened in the birth country of the Federation to engage in Congress Sessions and to observe the previous week’s Stakeholder Roundtables and Ministers Summit on the Added Value of Responsible Medicines Use – setting polices for better, cost-effective healthcare.
The Roundtables and Ministers Summit also brought the release of two key documents that were commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Health – one from World Health Organization (WHO) on The Pursuit of Responsible Use of Medicines and one from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics on Advancing Responsible Use of Medicines, with the IMS report identifying an opportunity to avoid 500 billion USD annual in global health spending through more responsible medicines use.
Supporting these key findings, several of the FIP Centennial Congress Sessions took the lead in offering ways in which pharmacists may be used to their utmost potential in increasing responsible medicines use. This was especially the case within the issue of non-adherence, which accounts for 57% of avoidable costs. Dr Martin Schulz, Chairman Drug Commission of German Pharmacists (AMK), reported a study that states interventions by pharmacists increased adherence in chronic, multi-therapy patients by 36%.
Such studies exemplify both the opportunity and the impact that pharmacists can have on increasing adherence and in turn patient health and healthcare savings. In widespread commitment to such issues, FIP released the Centennial Declaration, a document signed by all 127 FIP Member Organisations world-wide. The Declaration outlines key goals and initiatives that position the pharmacist as leaders in bettering responsible medicines use on a global level.
