Members of the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee, the Pharmacy Delivering a Healthier Wales delivery board and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) in Wales launched a refreshed set of goals for the sector yesterday (October 27).

The new plans build on the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee’s 10-year plan for pharmacy, Pharmacy: Delivering a Healthier Wales, which sets out a vision for how pharmacy practice should evolve in Wales by 2030.

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A Welsh government spokesperson told C+D today that "the revised goals set out aspirations for how pharmacy practice will develop in Wales in the next three years" to December 2025.

"This includes …wider use of pharmacogenomics," they explained.

"Detailed plans" on out how pharmacogenomics will be used by pharmacy professionals will be set out after the Welsh government publishes its Genomics Delivery Plan for Wales, they added.

 

Additional goals

 

The RPS said the goals for 2025 included increasing patient access to pharmacist independent prescribers and delivering pharmaceutical services in areas such as palliative and end of life care and mental health. 

The pharmacy bodies also pledged to review how automation and electronic prescribing can help improve the care pharmacy teams deliver.

Wales’s minister for health and social services, Eluned Morgan, who endorsed the plans, said that "increasing use of automation will increase the capacity for pharmacy professionals to deliver outstanding care".

Meanwhile, "optimising the knowledge and skills of pharmacy professionals as medicines’ experts…will ensure they [can support] people as they transition between different parts of the health and social care service", she said.

 

"Excellent progress" already made

 

"A great deal has already been achieved" towards the 2030 vision for pharmacy practice in Wales, Ms Morgan stated. She estimated that "pharmacy professionals will achieve even more in the next three years."

Meanwhile, Wales’s chief pharmaceutical officer Andrew Evans remarked that the "ambitious new goals" for 2025 "build on the work we are already doing to implement ePrescribing in secondary and primary care, increasing the use of digital technology and pharmacogenomics".

"We also want to ensure the profession meets its obligations to be more socially responsible, tackling inequalities in health, supporting environmental sustainability and promoting the use of the Welsh language," he added.

RPS Director for Wales Elen Jones said she felt "increasingly confident we are on track to meet our 2030 aspirations".

"I am proud that the RPS in Wales has been a part of this important work," she said, describing the input of the pharmacy profession from across Wales as "truly inspirational".