Summary
HCPC-Europe’s Conference 2007
Drug Packaging – the Prescription for Success
On November 8th, a number of leading experts active in the field of patients adherence to medicinal therapy met in Copenhagen upon the invitation of the European Health Care Compliance Packaging Council (HCPC-Europe) to discuss ways of improving patient adherence to medicinal therapy and the role packaging can play in this objective.
"Mind the Gap – Improving the Relationship between People and through Information"
David Dickinson MA FRSA, Principal Consultant at Consumation Ltd., London, Great Britain highlighted in his presentation the difference in perception of health conditions, medicines and what they do between health care providers and patients. He raised the question whether the information given to patients complies with their needs and is sufficient to lead to concordance. He explained the regulatory hierarchy concerning contents and form of the information conveyed and concluded that better Patient Information Leaflets would be better read.
"Developing Integrated Multi-Channel Compliance Programmes"
Leonard Starnes, Head of Global E-Business, Primary Care at Bayer Schering Pharma, Berlin, Germany put the focus on electronic means to help patients to adhere to their medicinal regimen. He emphasized that there was not a single solution and that the integration of multiple interventional channels provided a more complete and coherent knowledge of a patient’s needs and therefore allowed earlier identification of the likelihood of non-compliance. He explained how the transtheoretical model of change and specific software programmes could assist case managers such as call centres or nurses to keep patients adherent. A challenge for electronic compliance support is data protection and privacy but this is by no means insurmountable.
"Individualized Blister Packaging of Medicines for Patients"
Jörg Geller, Member of the Board at Kohl Medical AG, Merzig, Germany underlined in his presentation (nominated for the HCPC-Europe Packaging Award 2007) the importance of the demographic change between now and 2050 and the increase in chronic diseases. The change in family situations and the costs ofr nursing homes and homes for the aged demand for new drug packaging solutions to keep the elderly in their homes as long as possible. He explained the various models of individualized medication packs such as tubular bags as used in Sweden and Denmark, underlining the cost savings for health insurers and other funding organisations. The recently developed individualized blister, a product of 7 X 4 Pharma, is a means to support patients with comprehensive and easily understandable information delivering the medicine to those who are in need of multiple medications.
"EU Healthcare Developments – the Patients Perspectives"
Nicola Bedlington, Executive Director at European Patients’ Forum, Brussels, Belgium started her session by giving an insight into the background of the European Patients’ Forum and its vision and mission. She pointed out the importance of health democracy in practice in an EU context by EPF’s positioning in key EU health policy debates: Information to patients, health services and taking part in the discussion of the EU health strategy are the main aspects in the work of EPF. She gave an outlook on possible EPF / HCPC-Europe cooperation on advancing patient-centred, equitable healthcare in the EU.
"Do clinical trial findings on patient adherence have real impact on medical practice? Is change imminent?"
Dr. Nicolas Favre, European Manager at Aardex Group Switzerland, demonstrated the problem of non-adherence by analysing four major fields of ambulatory pharmacotherapy: Tuberculosis, Steroidal Contraception, Hypertension and HIV. The conclusion was that poor adherence to medication regimens is common in ambulatory patients, that a collaborative approach was needed particularily with long-term pharmacotherapy and that a realistic and accurate measurement of day-by-day execution was required. He could demonstrate that interventions at the right point in time as a result of measurement guided medication management (MGMM) could significantly improve adherence and outcomes.
"Packaging, Naming, Compliance - and the Pharmaceutical Industry"
Annemarie Hellebek, Risikomanager Overlaege Ph.D., Administrationen Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark demonstrated in her presentation most vividly the mix-ups of medicines due to look-alike drug packaging and sound-alike drug names. She classified medication errors as routine errors, skill-based errors and cognitive errors, and explained possible solutions to these three categories. A design competition in Denmark was set up to focus on patient safety only working with the co-operation of medical staff.
"Reminder Packaging for Approving Adherence to Self-Administered Long-Term
Medication – Cochrane Systematic Review"
Dr. Carl James Heneghan, Deputy Director Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine & Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Dep. Of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford vividly emphasized that current methods of improving medication adherence for health problems are mostly complex, labour-intensive, and not reliably effective. Medication “reminder packaging” which incorporates a date or time for a medication to be taken in the packaging can act as a reminder system to improve adherence. Underlined by specific tests he showed that reminder packaging shows a significant 11% increase in the percentage of pills taken, (95% confidence interval CI 6% to 17%) with the conclusion that reminder packaging may represent a simple method for improving adherence for patients with selected conditions.