The New Medicines Service (NMS) to be launched by October 2011 will give Pharma companies a potential opportunity to gain a more detailed insight into patients decisions about taking their newly prescribed medicines, particularly if they choose to work with pharmacists actively intending to provide the new service and their advisors.
The NMS gives Pharma companies an opportunity to provide pharmacists with additional patient information aimed at improving patient understanding of specific therapies and thereby enhancing patient compliance. This could be printed information or perhaps direction to a dedicated product specific web site or advice tool
In my opinion, an innovative Pharma company could benefit themselves and the patients taking their drugs quite significantly, if they choose to support pharmacists in providing the NMS. For example product or therapy specific information could be provided by download to pharmacists to use with patients on handheld devices like the i-Pad. As part of such an innovation data could also be fed back from such devices in real time to the Pharma company giving valuable feedback upon patients reactions to the material/s provided and their propensity to continue with the prescribed medication long-term.
Pharmacy Consulting Ltd would welcome the opportunity to work with one or more Pharma companies to develop such a support mechanism to pharmacists providing the NMS and to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach developed.