The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7405 p712
17 June 2006

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NHS Innovations prize for pharmacy team

Pharmacy-generated lists of patients taking oral anticoagulants have helped Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare Trust win the NHS Innovations South-East (IT and knowledge management) prize for 2006.

Each week the pharmacy at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital generates a list of all the patients who have been prescribed oral anticoagulants. The anticoagulant co-ordinator then uses the list to confirm that all those who have had oral anticoagulants dispensed have been referred to the anticoagulation monitoring service. Chief pharmacist Malcolm Irons and his team have been using the system since September 2005. At present the list needs to be generated manually, but Mr Irons is hoping to automate the system to make the lists available on the hospital intranet and also to expand it to other treatment areas, such as infection management.

The team was presented with a trophy and £2,000 to put towards further developing the project, which will be entered into the NHS Innovations national finals later in the year.