Season’s Greetings from MOIC
The team at MOIC would like to wish everyone a Happy Holiday season.
2021 has been a challenging and busy year. Take a look at what we have been up to in our 2021 Newsletter.
SHAPES present at the 1st North American Conference on Integrated Care 21
We were delighted to collaborate with Edgeneering (EDGE) recently to present an electronic poster at the 1st North American Conference on Integrated Care 2021, which was held online between 4 – 7 October.
The conference theme was ‘Co-designing for health and wellbeing with individuals and communities’, and brought together leaders, researchers, clinicians, managers, citizens, patients and caregivers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care.
The poster described activities that had been undertaken in Pilot Theme 3 as part of Phase 2 of the SHAPES Pan-European Pilot Campaign, wherein target users provided feedback on the design of a patient-facing app for optimising their use of medicines. The app is a targeted combination of the eCare app (EDGE) and the eHealthpass app (GNOMON). Participants in the study were presented with design mock-ups and feedback on the app’s visual appearance was sought via interview. By involving users from an early stage, it was possible to identify specific adaptations deemed relevant to improve the app’s usability and the users’ acceptance for new technologies.
MOIC paper published – Consultant Respiratory Pharmacist Role
MOIC are proud to be working with consultant respiratory pharmacist Carine Gormely to improve medicines optimisation in people with respiratory conditions across Northern Ireland.
This week our paper was published that outlines some of the clinical and economic factors associated with the decisions to invest in the consultant pharmacist model of care in Northern Ireland.
Medicines optimisation for those with respiratory conditions can have a significant impact on clinical outcomes and substantial efficiency gains for health care. Consultant pharmacists are experts working at the top of their specialism in four main pillars of practice, namely clinical care, leadership, education and training, and research and development. A consultant respiratory pharmacist has recently been appointed at a large Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland to provide expert care and clinical leadership for the medicines optimisation agenda with regards to respiratory care in Northern Ireland.
To read the full article follow the link below.
MOIC continues to share knowledge throughout the world
Throughout the past year travelling and visiting other sites globally has not been possible however this has not prevented MOIC co-operating and working cohesively to deliver safer and more effective medicines use.
MOIC are key drivers in knowledge translation via the hosting programme. Under this programme, visitors are usually welcomed to Northern Ireland for periods lasting between 1 day and 5 months. During 2020/21 these visits were unable to progress however some collaborative links were progressed.
Staff from MOIC, Northern Trust Pharmacy and Microbiology have been working with Sonja Guntschnig from Austria. Sonja first visited NHSCT under the hosting programme in 2019. She is now developing antimicrobial stewardship programmes within her hospital which could potentially be scaled within her region. Linked to this, she will be undertaking a PhD under the supervision and mentorship of Ulster University and MOIC.
MOIC & Pharmacy teams in Northern Trust have been working with Ulster University to secure approval for a Pharmacy Masters student from Misr University for Science and Technology (MUST) in Egypt. The project will evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on antimicrobial prescribing and resistance patterns in secondary care and commenced in April 2021. Data collection will take place across the Antrim and Causeway sites within the NHSCT.
Also Professor Mike Scott is jointly supervising a new PhD student based at the University of Tartu in Estonia. During her studies, Anita Tuula will be examining the area of medicines use reviews with a focus on older people and polypharmacy.
MOIC work as part of collaboration on PPE contract for HSCNI
Economy Minister Diane Dodds and Health Minister Robin Swann recently visited Denroy in Bangor to welcome the creation of 130 jobs and a £19.5millon PPE contract with Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSCNI). Director of MOIC Professor Mike Scott also attended to represent MOIC’s involvement in the project. MOIC worked alongside colleagues from BSO Pals and Infection Prevention Control to ensure that the masks met the needs of the Health service
The major new contract is great news for both health and economy in Northern Ireland and will see Denroy manufacture and supply FFP3 masks to HSCNI from its new manufacturing facility in Bangor, Co Down. To support Denroy to deliver the contract, Invest Northern Ireland has offered the company £1.5m of support towards 130 jobs.
Speaking about the project Professor Mike Scott said:
“MOIC were delighted to be involved from the outset on this project, combining skills from the private sector and the health service. The COVID-19 pandemic brought many challenges to the Health Service in Northern Ireland including challenges around PPE. We have the skillset in MOIC to work closely with the commercial sector and the health service to ensure that the products meet the needs to the health service in Northern Ireland”
MOIC team talk to Medical Update Online
Following our recently published article about the SHAPES project, MOIC programme managers Dr Nicola Goodfellow and Dr Maureen Spargo were interviewed for Medical Update Online to discuss the future of digitally enabled healthcare for older individuals and share more about MOIC’s involvement with the project.
This video interview was a great opportunity to talk about our involvement with the SHAPES project and reach a wider audience.
To view the video online click here.
About the paper
The paper was submitted to the journal Pharmacy as part of a Special Issue on Digital Solutions to Improve Medication Management. Entitled “Shaping the Future of Digitally Enabled Health and Care” the paper describes the work that the SHAPES Consortium is doing to support people as they grow older to maintain healthy and active lifestyles. It particularly focuses on the work that MOIC is doing around the theme of Medicines Control and Optimisation and describes the digital solutions that will be deployed in the SHAPES pilot later this year. The paper was a result of a collaborative effort from partners involved with Pilot theme 3 in the SHAPES consortium.
Links to the content can be found below:
Abstract: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4787/9/1/17
HTML Version: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4787/9/1/17/htm
PDF Version: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4787/9/1/17/pdf