Reimagining medicines information for patients (Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN, 16 March 2023)

Summary

A key priority for all involved in the development, manufacture and prescription of medicines is safety. To keep patients safe, regulators and pharmaceutical manufacturers have a statutory obligation to provide product information covering the most important instructions on how to take medicines correctly.

This report by Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) outlines the findings of a project around the accessibility of medication information. Patients, carers, healthcare professionals (HCPs) and senior healthcare system stakeholders were asked what they think about current medicines product information, and if it could be improved using digital solutions.

Content

Recommendations

Keep the focus on patients:

• Co-design digital solutions with patients. Run electronic medicines product information (ePI) pilots to validate solutions within a variety of real-life settings and platforms, for example, hospital, community, NHS website and app.
• Work with patients, pharmacists and HCPs to identify digital ePI use cases, including use cases for HCP-facing medicines information and prompts for interacting with patients.
• Specifically focus on co-designing solutions for patients who have difficulty accessing information or who have particular needs, such as patients with cognitive or sensory differences, health literacy or digital literacy needs.
• Co-develop a digital-first approach to provide ePI, ensuring that no patient is left behind.
• Provide appropriate training for HCPs to help them identify health and digital literacy needs and proactively ensure alternative access where ‘digital exclusion’ is identified.

Optimising the impact of technology by:

• Demonstrating trustworthiness through development of good governance, transparency, privacy and security.
• Focusing on defining the problem, gathering evidence, and conducting small tests of change.
• Explore working with NHS England to implement structured ePI and develop standards and funding for a sustainable digital model.
• Over time, making ePI an integral part of the digital health landscape so that technology providers can build innovative solutions which address the needs identified in this report – establishing the UK as a global leader in this arena.
• Supporting patients to make best use of ePI as it becomes available.
• With a multi stakeholder roadmap approach, evolving towards personalised medicines product information, connecting with the electronic health record.

Ensure strong connections with regulation & policy setters:

• Review legislation and regulation to identify potential adaptation in support of patient and carbon-friendly digital first approaches.
• Strengthen the real-world evidence base to understand how medicines information impacts on patient activation, adherence and outcomes.
• Obtain government support at the highest level to implement these recommendations.