Services for Business
The Pharmacy Practice Research and Development Group at the Leicester School of Pharmacy offers support to practising pharmacists who work in primary and secondary care. We encourage and will support the development and evaluation of new patient-centred pharmacy services.
An area of particular interest is the development of our established pharmacokinetic research where dried blood spot analysis has led to pioneering work to enable the monitoring of the anti-hypertensive drug, captopril, in neonates. Work is currently in hand to extend this method in order to measure the presence of medicines such as ‘statins’ in the blood, thus informing medication-taking behaviour and adherence in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
We work collaboratively with the RPS professional networks (the LNR local practice forum) and with our sister research units in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, such as the Mary Seacole Research Centre, the Health Policy Research Unit and the Centre for Social Action. We will act as a stimulus and sounding board for promoting new services, especially those aimed at developing the ‘social capital’ of community pharmacies and creating a more recognised ‘presence’ of pharmacies within communities.
Current key issues include the public health role of pharmacy geared towards reducing inequalities. As an example, the role of pharmacists in fulfilling the national dementia strategy and monitoring the prescribing and use of antipsychotic medicines is a current focal point.
A particularly innovative service of direct value to Community Pharmacies is the INSPIRE project. This is a newly developed tool that combines both the development and evaluation of pharmacy services within an educational model. The data produced feeds directly into research that examines the effectiveness of a variety of pharmacy activities.