You are invited to join us at the next SafetyNet seminar with Prof Rachel Elliott, taking place online on Wednesday 15 May at 12.30pm. To reserve your space, please click here.

The economic impact of suboptimal medication use has motivated most health systems to develop strategies and interventions such as those that change prescribing or monitoring behaviour, and medicines-taking. These are often costly, with variable evidence of effectiveness or cost-effectiveness. The real impact of these interventions is often uncertain, as behaviour may not change as anticipated, or clinical and economic effects of most errors may be minor, or not understood. In an increasingly financially constrained healthcare environment, it is essential to be clearer about the true economic impact of interventions to improve medicines use. The role of digital and remote technology in supporting medicines safety is expanding, but successful implementation depends upon tailoring interventions to practice settings, patients, disease conditions, and treatment regimens and supporting all users to engage effectively with the digital services provided.

This seminar aims to examine the role of health economics in supporting medicines safety.

Case studies will be used to illustrate key issues in patient safety and hazardous prescribing: (the PINCER intervention) and effects of interoperability on patient safety: (information standard ISN DAPB4013: Medicine and Allergy/Intolerance Data Transfer to patients and the NHS in England). The approaches to assessing cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve medication safety is examined, looking at challenges, focusing on challenges in this field.

Biography

Rachel is Professor of Health Economics at the University of Manchester, Lead for the Manchester Centre for Health Economics (MCHE) and health economics lead for the NIHR GM PSRC. She is a UK registered pharmacist. She was the first fulltime critical care pharmacist in the UK and completed a DH funded Phd in health economics in 1996. She has brought in over £35 million funding in applied health economics research which has influenced health policy and practice in the UK and internationally, completed a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard Medical School and has authored two books and over150 research publications. Research themes include medicines safety and adherence, digital health technology, diabetes, antibiotics, mental health and dementia. She has experience of working closely with the National Health Service in the UK and patient stakeholders in the development and evaluation of a pharmacist/IT complex intervention in primary care, PINCER (RCT, regional and national roll-out), the Electronic Prescription Service, the New Medicine Service and new NHS medicines interoperability information standards. A key research area has been the economic impact of medication error, with specific interest in understanding both health and non-health outcomes associated with cross-therapeutic interventions. She has recently finished her term as Director of Manchester Clinical Trials Unit. She is chair of the Selection Panel for the NIHR Integrated Clinical and Practitioner Academic Programme. Sheis a member of the editorial board for Pharmacoeconomics, is associate editor for the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, and had two terms as chair of the Pharmacy Research UK (PRUK) Scientific Advisory Panel. She is a PRUK trustee. She was a member of a NICE technology appraisal committee from 2006-2023. She was involved in the Cancer Drugs Fund review in 2016 and was lead economist on the specially convened COVID technology NICE appraisals panel. She is a regular contributor to international advisory boards around pharmaceutical, biological and advanced therapy HTA and reimbursement. She is committed to supporting research career development. She has set up internships and provided pre-registration training to support graduates to develop skills in research, and many of those individuals have stayed on in her group to complete Phds. She has supervised multiple MSc students and 19 PhD students to graduation, from a range of professional backgrounds and from a range of countries. She is a member of the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek –Vlaanderenreview panel for doctorate fellowships. She contributes to Athena Swan and women in leadership activities, advocacy for groups under-represented in the research community, running action learning sets,and providing mentoring and career workshops for early and mid-career researchers and academics. She is an active mentor for NIHR and the Society of Social Medicine.

We look forward to seeing you at the seminar. Please do share with your networks.

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