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THE HON CATHERINE KING

Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing

MedicineWise Award Winners

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Programs and services which are improving the use of medicines in contexts ranging from Aboriginal health to pregnancy have been recognised with National MedicineWise Awards.

PDF printable version of MedicineWise Award Winners (PDF 222 KB)

25 May 2012

Programs and services which are improving the use of medicines in contexts ranging from Aboriginal health to pregnancy have been recognised with National MedicineWise Awards.

Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Catherine King, on behalf of Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek announced the winners of the awards, which are organised by NPS.

“The awards are an opportunity to recognise the excellent work being undertaken across the nation to promote quality use of medicines by consumers and health professionals alike,” Ms King said.

“Quality Use of Medicines improves the health of patients, reduces waste and inefficiency, and helps to prevent long term problems such as antibiotic resistance.”

Ms King said quality use of medicines meant selecting management options wisely, choosing suitable medicines if they were needed, and using those medicines safely and effectively.

The MedicineWise Awards were judged by a panel including NPS Chief Executive Officer, Dr Lynn Weekes; NPS chair, Dr Janette Randall; and GP and media personality Dr John D’Arcy.

The categories and winners are:

  • Building a MedicineWise community: consumer programs.
Winners: Northern Rivers CareerLink Pharmacy Project, which supports Aboriginal students to pursue a career in pharmacy; and RedUSE (Reducing Use of Sedatives) Project, examining use of psychotropic medications in aged care homes.
  • Education for health professionals to build quality use of medicines skills.
Winners: Be Alert and Work Together medicine safety: Dose Administration Aid incident awareness toolkit, for use in aged care; and Medicines Book for Aboriginal Health Workers, a manual for workers with low literacy levels.
  • Excellence in labelling and packaging.
Winner: Medication Compliance Sachet: APHS Packaging. The sachet allows community pharmacists to provide a dose administration aid to manage multiple medications more safely and effectively.
  • Best e-health resources.
Winner: Pharmacovigilance in pregnancy using population-based linked datasets. This project studies dispensing patterns of medicines and their impact on pregnancy outcomes at a population level.
  • Best media report of a medicines story.
Winner: Peter Waterman, “Australian Pharmacist” for his article on the role that pharmacists play in dealing with people with mental illness.

The winners received their awards from the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, at the NPS National Medicines Symposium dinner.

For more information, please contact the parliamentary secretary’s office on 02 6277 4230

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