Optimising medicines use: a health economics perspective

Speaker: Professor Rachel A Elliott BPharm Phd FRPharmS,
                 Professor of Health Economics, Centre Lead, Manchester Centre for Health Economics, UK
Time and date: 10-11am, Monday 25 September 2023
Location: 14-216 (Sir Llew Edwards Building).
Attend online: Register for Zoom

Abstract

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 use 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 optimising medicines use. Case studies in patient adherence to medicines: (New Medicine Service); patient safety and hazardous prescribing: (the PINCER intervention); 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 the cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve medication use is examined, looking at challenges, focusing on challenges in this field.

About the presenter

Rachel Elliott is Professor of Health Economics at the University of Manchester, Lead for the Manchester Centre for Health Economics (MCHE) She is a UK registered pharmacist. She was the first full-time critical care pharmacist in the UK and completed a DH-funded Phd in health economics in 1996. She has brought in over £28million 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 over 150 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 is the economics lead for the NIHR Patient Safety Research Collaboration based in Manchester. 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. She is a member of the editorial board for Pharmacoeconomics, is associate editor for the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, and has just completed two terms as chair of the Pharmacy Research UK (PRUK) Scientific Advisory Panel. She is a PRUK trustee. She has been a member of a NICE technology appraisal committee since 2006. She was involved in the Cancer Drugs Fund review in 2016 and is lead economist on the specially convened COVID technology NICE appraisals panel. She regularly contributes 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 in developing skills in research, and many of those individuals have stayed 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 – Vlaanderen review 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.