The Australian Pharmacy Professional (APP) has set its attention to the use of dose administration aid (DAA) services by community pharmacies, for its conference on the Gold Coast.
As many as one in four Australians aged 50+ have more than one chronic therapy condition that they take often complex combinations of medications for, often at the risk of non-adherence and errors and the risk of medication-related mishaps increasing with age, according to independent research commissioned by the Pharmacy Guild Australia.
Dose administration aids deliver multiple medications, sorted ready for use in a hygienic, tamper proof blister pack – but their uptake among Australians aged 50+ taking ongoing medication is as low as 16 per cent.
This week findings of an independent study supported by Amneal Australia and titled ‘Consumer Perception of DAA’s’ will be presented at the AAP conference by Kos Sclavos, current APP Board Chairman and a former President of the Guild.
Sclavos says that in this age group the majority of Australians are taking their prescription medications by using the original bottle or packaging (67 per cent), or plastic pill boxes (26 per cent), but that up to 40 per cent are open to changing to using DAAs prepacked by their pharmacist.
The focus on DAAs coincides with incentive funding under the Government’s Community Pharmacy Agreement of $58.4 million to boost DAA services in 2015/2016 – a 69 per cent increase on the previous year.
Justin Rolls of Amneal Australia says the company is doing its part with products such as its Medico Pak, to support greater uptake of DAAs that are easy to use and labelled with complete instructions and information.
“As pharmacy and consumer demand increases, the capability we can supply centres on an integrated system for handling DAA packs produced by a pharmacy, and includes a robotic technology solution called ‘Alpaca’ that will be launched by Amneal at the APP conference.”
