Medicines Management
Issue no 1, pp1-6
January/February 2002

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50 second-wave pilots imminent

Health ministers are expected to announce the second wave of pilot sites selected for the collaborative medicines management scheme in England in early February.

Up to 50 pilot sites will form the second wave of the scheme and, according to Richard Seal, project manager for medicines management services at the National Prescribing Centre, Liverpool, an annoucement is expected soon.

"We've taken an initial list of the sites that we think should be selected, but obviously the Department of Health will want to add its own intelligence to that, and ministers are expected to make an announcement at the beginning of February," said Mr Seal.

There have been four waves of medicines management schemes proposed in all, with each wave likely to be bigger than its predecessors. Mr Seal said: "We want to roll out the learning from earlier work as soon as we can, hence the increasing number of sites in each wave." He added that having more sites meant that the schemes were likely to come up with more innovations and ways of tackling similar problems.

The NPC is evaluating data sent in from each pilot site in the first wave, although there is no formal evaluation of the programme.

Mr Seal said: "We've had the first two months of data in from what the 26 pilot sites have been doing, and our analysis tends to suggest that the global measures that we're using are useful."

He added that the NPC had received lots of feedback from the sites about what they were doing, and to whom they were talking. "And we're really pleased with the number of pharmacies that are getting involved. There are some very good relationships beginning to emerge from the project teams working with local pharmaceutical committees."

Mr Seal said that the first batch of data from the 26 first-wave pilots should be available in time for the third learning workshop, which takes place on 11 and 12 February at Hinckley, Leicestershire.