BUILDING STRONGER COMMUNITY PHARMACY FOR ALL SOUTH AFRICANS

UTi Pharma’s sponsorship of Pharmacy Advisory Forum making a difference

Community pharmacies are integral to delivering accessible and affordable healthcare to all South Africans – and the Pharmacy Advisory Forum is helping connect manufacturers, UTi Pharma and community pharmacists across a range of projects and issues that will help make this proposition a reality.

The Forum was established in 1998 to provide an industry platform to bring UTi Pharma’s clients, the majority of research-based pharmaceutical manufacturers and the end-of-line customers, the pharmacists, closer together to share ideas and build a mutually beneficial Pharma distribution service.
 
Regular national and regional workshops are held in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban, and the Forum gives participating retail pharmacies an opportunity to directly interface with UTi Pharma’s operations and its manufacturing client base, make their needs known and and discuss projects in progress or in development under discussion. Participating pharmacists then feedback to other pharmacists in their area, ensuring information flows back and forth from a grassroots level.

The Forum is involved in a wide range of activities, from policy debate and influence to developing education-based initiatives and day-to-day operational improvements in the way business is done.

A number of operational improvements are made following discussion at the Forum. Some examples include improvements made to invoicing to make it user-friendly and ongoing improvements to FutureWave.  A test project undertaken by UTi Pharma is currently in place at pharmacy level to look at ways to improve the entire supply chain of fridge items such as insulin.
 
Mirixa

UTi Pharma, the Forum and independent pharmacists led by the Forum’s IT team are working on bringing Mirixa to South Africa, another initiative which was conceptualized on a trip to an NCPA congress by UTi Pharma and independent pharmacists.

MIrixa was founded and is sponsored by the NCPA. It offers technology-enabled, patient care services delivered one-to-one via community pharmacy, and builds on relationships that patients have with local pharmacists. The project focuses on community pharmacists because, the NCPA found, they are:

• Highly trusted by patients and physicians
• Highly accessible
• Clinically trained and administratively competent
• Focused on moving from product dispensing to clinical patient services
• A powerful channel for patient engagement.
  

The team is currently engaged with NCPA and key drivers in Mirixa to ensure that South African pharmacists, like their colleagues in the US and Australia, have access to this advanced technology which is the future of pharmacy worldwide.