Can you help improve the use of medicines in Northern Ireland?

Most people take medicines at some point in their life. Medicines can help you but people don’t always get the best from them. This may be because the medicines are not taken correctly, or people are taking medicines they no longer need.

Medicines optimisation is about making sure that the right patients, get the right medicine, and at the right time. By focusing on patients and their experiences, the goal is to help patients to:

• Improve the results achieved from taking medicines

• Take their medicines correctly

• Avoid taking unnecessary medicines

• Reduce wastage of medicines

• And improve medicines safety

In Northern Ireland we collect a lot of information about how medicines are used, for example, which medicines are prescribed by your doctor. The Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) has been asked to develop a Medicines Optimisation Dashboard. The dashboard will bring together information on how medicines are being used in Northern Ireland. It will highlight differences in how medicines are used locally and encourage discussion on whether the care being provided is the correct type of care. By doing this we hope to get better use of medicines and improve results for patients.

An example of information that could be included in the dashboard would be to compare the prescribing of antibiotics across Northern Ireland to try and understand why the prescribing of antibiotics is higher in some areas than others.

We are currently seeking views on the development of this dashboard.

• Who do you think would use a Medicines Optimisation Dashboard?

• What information about medicines use in Northern Ireland would you like to see included? 

If you would like to share your views, please complete this short survey by 19th March 2017: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NI_Medicines_Optimisation_Dashboard