Improving Medicines and Pharmacy through Digital

Improving Medicines and Pharmacy through Digital
Improving Medicines and Pharmacy through Digital
Read more

How to apply

  1. Register an account.
  2. Start your entry (save it in-progress).
  3. Submit your entry to be in the running.

Best of luck!

Start your entry

Medicines have the potential to make a significant contribution to how systems address health inequalities, manage population health and improve patient care. They are also a key area for cash-strapped systems looking to find financial savings, drive additional value and unlock efficiencies - with national workstreams from the Single National Formulary to smarter use of medicines data sharpening the focus.

As the NHS continues to bring pharmacy and prescribing teams more closely together across the end-to-end patient pathway, there is a growing need for digital prescription and medication management, and effective integration into wider patient records. With electronic prescribing now widely established, judges are lookinag for entries that go beyond core implementation - applying data, analytics, AI-enabled decision support and automation to medicines optimisation, safety and adherence. The rise in e-pharmacy, and shift to community based care, also provide new routes to accessing services for patients.

Entries into this category can be focused on medicines and pharmacy related to a specific clinical pathway, or more generally at trust, organisation or system level. Judges will be particularly interested in digital initiatives that have the potential for scale and spread - and that have achieved genuine adoption in everyday medicines practice - and that can also be clearly linked to better outcomes for patients.

Eligibility

  • All NHS organisations including trusts, systems, General Practice and community pharmacists.
  • Evidence must relate to a project, ongoing or completed within the 2 years up until the award entry deadline.

Ambition

The challenge and context within which your project, person or organisation is set alongside your goals and targets whether quantitative or qualitative, and how this aligns with national priorities.

  • Provide a clear rationale for the digital project or service and the context in which this was requared - what were the project aims, and what strategic thinking was done before bringing technology to the table?
  • Explain what made your approach new or distinct from established practice such as core electronic prescribing - what is the extra value your work delivers?
  • Define the intended measures of success and the steps put in place to achieve them, and discuss how the risks of exclusion or exacerbating inequalities were considered and mitigated.

Collaboration

The stakeholders' involvement in co-designing and delivering the project. How have patients, staff at all levels, communities and other parties worked together to realise the outcomes?

  • Share how all relevant staff and clinicians - including pharmacy, prescribing and multidisciplinary teams - were engaged in the design and implementation of the project, product or service.
  • Explain how patients, families and the community were involved in the design, planning and implementation of this project, product or service.
  • Describe and provide testimonial evidence of the working relationship between the technology partner (if relevant) and the NHS organisation that enabled a genuinely co-produced product or service.

Impact

The measurable benefits delivered to patients, staff, your organisation or the wider system. Provide data and evidence showing improvements to outcomes, quality, access, equity or efficiency.

  • Provide qualitative and quantitative evidence of improved safety, adherence, access, experience and/or outcomes as a result of the project, with clear before-and-after comparisons.
  • Describe how the project or service was seamlessly developed and deployed whilst retaining any existing services to minimise disruption to patients and staff, and evidence adoption in everyday medicines practice.
  • Share any financial impacts of implementation, including evidence relating to value for money and/or efficiencies realised by the project or service.

Scale

How your work has been shared, adopted or replicated beyond your immediate team or organisation. This includes dissemination through publications, presentations, toolkits, partnerships or inspiring similar initiatives elsewhere.

  • Describe, and if possible evidence, how the learnings from the project or product/service development have been shared across and beyond your organisation or system.
  • Provide evidence of adoption or replication beyond your immediate team or organisational boundaries.
  • Discuss the scope for further replication or scaling up of this project, product or service in other settings.

Sustainability

The potential for the project/work to continue and create lasting impact. Evidence of how it can be sustained or built upon.

  • Discuss how this digital project has positively impacted safety, quality and patient care, and how it will achieve lasting impact.
  • Explain how the work is being embedded into business as usual, and what resource or funding is in place to sustain it.
  • Describe your plans for building on the work, including its contribution to wider goals for medicines optimisation and system sustainability.

Improving Medicines and Pharmacy through Digital

Start your entry

To find out more

Partnership opportunities:  Sponsorship Sales Team
Awards entry enquiries: Support Team
Judging and event management: Awards Support