The MOIC and pandemic critical care drug requirements
Pharmacist Anita Hogg explains the work of the Medicines Optimisation Innovation Centre (MOIC) in Belfast and how the Centre helped to ensure reliable provision of critical care drugs during the covid-19 pandemic.
Anita Hogg (Lead, Medicines Optimisation Innovation Centre (MOIC), Belfast) says that her key function is to drive innovation in medicines’ use. This is achieved through a variety of activities including research, quality improvement, service development, use of technology, knowledge exchange and working with collaborators in the pharmaceutical industry, academia and with the community and voluntary sector. The MOIC has also forged collaborative links with colleagues across Europe. The work is “very much tapping into the ethos of ‘test, scale and spread’”, she adds.
Estimating the critical care drug requirements in response to the covid-19 pandemic was an important task for the MOIC. Faced with a global emergency in which health care systems worldwide were doing their utmost to scale up resourcing and capacity to manage the pandemic, MOIC staff realised that increased demand for drugs, especially critical care drugs would be a major issue. Drug supply and demand in a pandemic such as this is complex because there is a massive increase in demand coupled with a degree of urgency generated by anxiety about the availability of drugs for critical care. “There was a lot of media attention around medicines to help ventilation and where they were going to come from”, says Ms Hogg.
A full report of this work can be found here.
Hogg A, Huey R, Scott MG, et al. Informing critical care drug requirements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eur J Hosp Pharm. 2020;27:263–266.
