At the XXII National Congress of the Pharmaceutical Profession, the panel “The Assistance Pharmacy that the patient needs” was presented, during which the new app of the General Council was presented, ‘My Assistance Pharmacy NDFA’.
Raquel Martínez, general secretary of the CGCOF, has affirmed that they have been working for years to promote the care role of the pharmacist, developing a multitude of services that consider the levers with which they can support the transformation of the health system. The latest is the new app “My NDFA Healthcare Pharmacy”, “which comes to support the conviction that all these services must be provided centered on the patient and on how that patient uses his medication”.
It is an additional development of the project with the same name, “My Assistance Pharmacy”, that facilitates the registration of health and pharmacotherapeutic information of patients, enabling the provision, by pharmacists, of services in a protocolized manner and with the highest quality standards. With “My Assistance Pharmacy” the patient can give access to the pharmacist of their choice, to all medication and the outcome of treatments, wherever you are from any pharmacy that is attached. Before the creation of the app, this information was only accessible to professionals. However, with its launch, now it is the patient himself who can see the information recorded, from the medication that has been dispensed to the history of clinical parameters.
All these characteristics have led to an exponential growth in the use of the platform by pharmacies, whose implementation and development is being carried out gradually in the different Autonomous Communities. Its aspiration is to achieve the total generalization of its use and the incorporation of the more than 22,000 that make up the Spanish network, so that they are all interconnected. Currently, it already has the collaboration and support of more than 1,000 pharmacies from 35 Official Associations; more than 2,800 patients incorporated into the system, nearly 700,000 registered dispensations and more than 8,000 registered pharmaceutical indications. “It is, in short, a professional response to the evolution of the sector and the transformation of care service models, which allows us to be much closer to patients, connected and professionalised”.
For her part, Sara Morais Vargas presented the main conclusions of the exploratory study on ‘the role of pharmacy in the future’ carried out by the company GAD3. “In general, the pharmacy is, as an establishment and as a profession, highly appreciated in Spanish society. This not only considers that the service provided by pharmacists is fundamental, but also sees them as health professionals, close to users to whom they offer value and trust. An assessment, already positive, that has been reinforced by the pandemic”, has indicated the general director of GAD3.
Among the data that this study has evidenced, it is especially noteworthy that 90% of those surveyed consider that a greater Collaboration of Pharmacy with Primary Care, while 85% affirm that they value positively or very positively the provision of more health services to the population from pharmacies, especially in the case of the rural population. Of these services, the most requested by patients are: receiving advice on the use of medication, requested by 85%, that pharmacists carry out the measurement and advice of clinical parameters such as weight, cholesterol or blood pressure , by 75%, or the collaborative dispensing of the Pharmacy with the hospital, considered positive by 74%. Also, 74% of those surveyed demand the elaboration of SPD systems in chronic and polymedicated elderly, 73%, services on self-care advice and 70%, vaccination services. Regarding their care during the pandemic, 75% of the people interviewed value the Pharmacy as a key health agent for the detection of COVID-19 and for decongesting Primary Care.
Some data and an assessment that you share Marcos Martinez Cortes, manager of GEPAC (Spanish Group of Cancer Patients), who has stated that “the Community Pharmacy must be something more precisely because of its proximity, its knowledge of the patient and its knowledge and health training. Likewise, its greater integration can serve as an outlet for the National Health System, especially now, when so much is said about achieving its sustainability. To achieve this goal and keep the patient at the center of the system, all the agents involved have to work together, of which pharmacists are a fundamental part”.
