Dive Brief:
- National Health Services (NHS) in the UK has launched the Medicines Optimisation Prototype Dsahboard—a huge aggregation of data including hospital admissions data and more.
- The goal is to reduce waste, increase adherence and decrease the number of hospital visits related to medication misuse.
- More than $500 million is lost in primary care because of medicine waste.
Dive Insight:
Generally, when experts focus on medication misuse, the main topic of conversation is that patients do not take the medication in proper doses or for as long as directed. However, while adherence is a significant problem, the larger issue is not taking medication as directed, meaning noncompliance in all of its forms.
The new NHS dashboard will use large amounts of data, including hospital admissions information and various patients experience indicators to examine medication safety, pharmacy services and the factors that ultimately contribute to medication misuse.
According to the NHS, 50% of medications are not taken as directed, and up to 8% of hospitalizations in the general population are related to medication problems. It’s even worse in the over-65 population in which 17% of hospitalizations are medication related.