The core principles and responsibilities have been developed to provide a high level common framework against which professionals and organisations can judge themselves. However, patients have different diseases, can be transferred to and from a whole range of organisations, and have their care managed by different healthcare professionals.

This means the method for embedding the principles and responsibilities into professional and organisational practice, and how accurate transfer of the recommended core information is achieved will vary across provider organisations.

To test the practical applicability of the guidance and the core content, early adopter sites are putting the high level principles and responsibilities into practice.

The strategic goal of the early adopter network is
..."to improve the transfer of information about medicines when people change care settings."

This goal is underpinned by two objectives:

• to increase the number of professionals that adhere to the 4 key principles
• to increase the number of organisations that undertake the 3 key responsibilities

If you would like to know more about being an early adopter then please contact Heidi Wright at heidi.wright@rpharms.com

A network of early adopter organisations have volunteered to help define and share good practice. They represent a variety of organisations, from a cross section of settings where patients care is transferred. The sites will identify how the core principles and responsibilities and/or minimum data set can be incorporated into local practice. Each group will develop improvement measures and review experience of implementation after six months. Experience and lessons learnt will be shared with other organisations via this website.

There will be three support meetings at the beginning, middle and end of the project. The workshops will all be held at RPS in London and the dates for these workshops are:

• 15 September 2011
• 1 December 2011
• 15 March 2012

View the early adopter sites