Report
Medicines are one of the most important aspects of modern healthcare. They can improve quality of life, cure illness and avoid premature death. However, in spite of the ubiquitous nature of medicines, the complexity of the medicines development process is often not fully understood.
This guide, ‘New Medicines, Better Medicines, Better Use of Medicines’, summarises the important role pharmaceutical science has played and continues to play in the development and use of medicines. It demonstrates the breadth of scientific knowledge and understanding necessary to underpin the full spectrum of pharmaceutical practice.
The guide also highlights the major challenges and opportunities faced when creating new medicines, improving existing medicines or ensuring the better, safer, use of medicines. Finally, it makes a series of seven recommendations for the future.
Implementation of the New Medicines Guide
The report identified 71 challenges facing pharmaceutical science. These challenges were grouped into seven recommendations of which RPS was to lead on the implementation of four, namely:-
- Recommendation 1 - Ensuring the Safe Use of Medicines
- Recommendation 2 - Stimulating New Antimicrobial Development and Improving Antimicrobial Stewardship
- Recommendation 3 - Adopting New Technologies
- Recommendation 5 - Increasing the Evidence Base for Pharmacy
Since the launch of the New Medicines guide, RPS has carried out much work to support the implementation of these four recommendations. In November 2016, Professor Jayne Lawrence, the RPS Chief Scientist, was invited by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to deliver the Shirley Norton lecture, a prestigious lecture that has in the past been given by Professor Theo Raynor, Professor Nick Barber and Professor Phil Routledge all of whom have all been members of the Pharmaceutical Science Expert Advisory Panel. Prof Lawrence was asked to describe the New Medicines guide and the activities RPS has carried out in implementing the recommendations in the presentation for the lecture.