The Canadian Pharmacist Association is calling for a national action plan to address the issues occurring from medication shortages and to stabilize the supply chain. Through their campaign “Rethink Pharmacists” they are seeking to increase the visibility for this issue (and others) and mobilize professionals and the general public.
Pharmacist James Morrison describes a real life example “Recently, one of my patients’ blood pressure medications wasn’t available because of a shortage. Switching this patient to an alternative drug was really challenging. We tried three different replacement medications before we could find an alternative that was effective and tolerable for them.”
MUUTAA has been leading a technology think tank to see how collective insights in treatment outcomes could help algorithms predict the best replacement strategy for each individual patient in a way that it provides sufficient details for the pharmacist / physician to understand the underpinning decision making logic.
Gaining sufficient access to outcome data remains challenging but we are convinced that the enabling required data is available between the different actors in the industry. MUUTAA therefor supports this initiative. We see a holistic approach to the problem is required to mobilize actors to share appropriate data to enable technological assistance.