The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7459 p2
7 July 2007

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Importance of innovation more
New crew at the Department of Health more

Importance of innovation

Mid-summer for The Journal is marked by the Pharmaceutical Care Awards, and the finalists for 2006 were recognised at a conference and dinner at the end of last week (pp10–14). This year, we departed from the norm and did not select winners and runners-up. Instead we decided that all seven finalists justified receiving the same prize and the right to call themselves a winner of a Pharmaceutical Care Award.

As ever, there were strong entries from Scotland, and it was pleasing to note that supplementary prescribing featured in two projects. Interestingly, and possibly explained in the recruitment feature in The Journal last week (30 June, p771), the expected clutch of finalists from primary care pharmacists in England was not evident. With so much uncertainty in the sector, following the merger and realignment of many primary care trusts, those pharmacists clearly had other matters on their minds. We look forward to receiving their entries next year.

We are grateful to our two sponsors: GlaxoSmithKline, which has supported the awards for 15 years, and the Company Chemists’ Association, which we welcomed for a second year. Richard Heath, director of commercial operations at GSK, made the observation that, although the general quality of the care award entries has been excellent over the years, the environment in which pharmacy operates now would have been unrecognisable when the awards were launched 15 years ago.

Digby Emson, chairman of the CCA, echoed this point by looking to the future and the further development of pharmacy: “Whether it’s new ways of coronary heart disease screening, developing a patient group direction for obesity or new diabetes screening, innovation is very important to us.”

We can only agree and look forward to next year’s examples of innovation in pharmaceutical care.

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New crew at the Department of Health

Harold Wilson said a week is a long time in politics — something that Lord Hunt must be pondering now that he is no longer the Government minister with responsibility for pharmacy. Alan Johnson, the new Secretary of State for Health, and his crew are now at the helm of the good ship Department of Health and it will be interesting to see who is given responsibility for pharmacy and in which direction the profession will be steered.

Uppermost in people’s minds in Lambeth is whether the new minister will take a different view to the reconstitution of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and whether the priorities in the DoH will change. Let us hope that whoever takes ministerial responsibility for pharmacy will appreciate that the profession needs to have some idea of the compass points, its ultimate destination and the estimated time of arrival — and that pharmacy is not left bobbing about in uncharted and increasingly turbulent seas.

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