As part of our Hybrid Pharma Packaging Partner (HP3) model, PILOT is the dedicated process behind product innovation; discovering, defining, developing delivering progressive new products.

MedAssess project Lead, Jon Sewell, has worked extensively in partnership with one of the top UK Pharmacy brands gaining coal face experience with the intention of discovering inefficiencies within pharmacy stores. This on-the-ground research revealed that pharmacists were spending excessive amounts of time delivering flu immunisations to patients. The primary cause of this inefficiency was found to be with the pharmacist attempting to gather the correct components required for the procedure.

According to the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), the government-backed programme to shift the delivery of flu vaccinations from GPs to Pharmacies is built upon the success of comparable programmes which have proved to deliver an increased patient satisfaction rate compared to having to book an appointment with the GP. The PSNC also feels that shifting the delivery of flu vaccinations to at-risk patients from over-worked GP practises to Pharmacies may also prove to be effective in improving the take-up of the NHS flu vaccine, because local pharmacies are ideally placed to target "hard to reach" patients.

However, the programme does bring with it a challenge for pharmacists across the country. The pharmacist is a pharmacy's biggest asset, and hence their time is premium. Every minute that the pharmacist spends assembling the gloves, dressings, disposable bags, alcohol pads and cotton wads in order to deliver the immunisation is a minute that the pharmacist is not spending on the patient, resulting in the patient possibly receiving a substandard level of care.

Enter MedAssess a development in global pharmaceutical packaging: a ground-breaking concept set to transform the pharmacist's experience when administering medical procedures. MedAssess Procedure Packs comprise of a dispensing box, each holding 15 individual sterile packs containing all the components needed to administer the required procedure. The current range includes 3 specifically developed skus; Flu & General Immunisation, Diabetes Screening and Cholesterol & Health Check.

With everything they need all in one sterile pack, pharmacists can save an average of 4 minutes per administration, relieving time to better care for their patients.

Each MedAssess pack is completely sterile, eradicating the risk of infection, preventing cross contamination of infections between patients, and removing any margin for human error.

The packs have been initially developed for the UK market. However, this is just the beginning; the pack concept has the potential to be optimised for delivering a whole range of procedures. Origin envisages the MedAssess Procedure Pack innovation greatly benefitting outreach programs delivering immunisations and medical procedures into 3rd world countries. For more information on this topic, see our previous post: MedAssess - Helping Detect and Monitor Diabetes