A pharmacy charity chief executive is calling for community pharmacies to get involved in research that could help inform the sector’s sleep health services.
Community Pharmacy Scotland and Community Pharmacy Wales have already pledged support for the AWAKE Check study, led by British Society of Pharmacy Sleep Services (BSPSS) chief executive Adrian Zacher as part of his PhD at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Read more: Superdrug launches online insomnia service
The study is open to anyone over 18 in the UK, and aims to understand how common comorbid insomnia and sleep apnoea (COMISA) symptoms are in UK adults to inform “better public-health and pharmacy-based approaches”.
It is a population research project that uses a free, five-minute questionnaire to help identify people who may be experiencing COMISA symptoms and direct them to support.
Health inequality
The Ulster Chemists’ Association Northern Ireland has also supported the study, but Zacher told C+D it still needs around 2,000 more participants to reach its target of 5,000.
“You can’t build healthcare systems on guesses, and we just don’t know how big an issue it is,” he said.
“I strongly suspect, with an aging population and our obesity epidemic, that we have significantly more people struggling with sleep apnoea symptoms.”
Read more: How to optimise sleep services in your pharmacy
Zacher hopes that reaching 5,000 participants will help researchers better understand the prevalence of sleep issues in the UK – and he predicts that they will be most common in parts of the country with “high health inequality”.
“I think that’s where we’ll find the problems are - and there’s no access to care, but there are pharmacies,” he said.
Read more: Boots launches 24-hour private insomnia treatment service
Zacher is encouraging community pharmacies to put up posters in their premises for the public to scan and take part in the study, and has also called on pharmacy teams to fill in the questionnaire.
He said there are opportunities for pharmacies to get paid for assessing and screening for insomnia and sleep apnoea, as well as signposting to secondary care, where patients can get a formal diagnosis.
“I want them to know more so that they can actually help people and put pound notes, not pennies, in the till,” he added.
Read more: Insomnia: Symptoms and prevalence
The study’s questionnaire uses the insomnia severity index and obstructive sleep apnoea screening tool STOP-Bang for the clinical assessment, along with a third optional tool called the functional outcome of sleep questionnaire, which assesses how sleep quality is impacting a person’s life.
While the questionnaire does not give a diagnosis, it will recommend that participants who have COMISA symptoms speak to a pharmacist or GP to get further clinical support.
Once the study reaches 5,000 participants, Zacher will analyse the anonymised data to establish how widespread sleep apnoea and insomnia symptoms are, and how pharmacy teams can provide more support.
Read more: Insomnia: Treatment options
The BSPSS has been granted the licenses for the validated screening tools used in the project for another two years, and Zacher plans to “revisit” the research when he has obtained a larger sample.
It comes after Superdrug launched a new insomnia service this year, and Boots launched a 24-hour private insomnia treatment service last year.
And it follows the BSPSS being shortlisted for innovation of the year at the 2024 C+D Awards.
