Research to be conducted at the new Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence (PACE) to be built in Brisbane could save lives and slice millions from Australia’s pharmaceutical benefits bill through better use of medicines.
The University of Queensland’s School of Pharmacy is a specialist in Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) research and will expand its research efforts when it relocates to the $60m complex to be build next to the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
An Economic Impact Assessment carried out by national accounting practice KPMG found that if QUM research to be carried out at PACE achieved as little as a 10 per cent reduction in public hospital drug-related admissions, this would save lives and cut $40m from the national health care bill.
Significant savings could also be achieved by the better use of medicines covered by Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme, according to Professor Sue Tett, Head of the School of Pharmacy for the past eight years and one of the driving forces behind PACE.
“One of our research strengths is quality use of medicines; how people actually use medicines in the community and how if they used them more effectively they could save money,” said Professor Tett.
QUM is part of the Federal Government’s national medicines policy and involves choosing and using medicines – or non-medicine measures – wisely, safely, economically and effectively to achieve the best possible results.
“If more attention was paid to this area, governments could certainly do a lot better (in maintaining the availability of affordable medicines) than they’re doing now,” said Professor Tett, who will concentrate on QUM research after recently handing over the role of head to Professor Nick Shaw.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia, one of the partners with UQ in the PACE project, said being next door to the PA Hospital would improve training for young pharmacists and aid research into another inefficiency in the health system, the proper care of hospital patients after discharge.
“Being next door to a major teaching hospital will help pharmacy students involved with the critical care and to consider one of the real problems with health care; how to have a seamless treatment from when you’re in hospital to when you’re discharged out into the community,” said John Bronger, National President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia
“There’s a real gap there. Because of that lack of seamlessness a lot of people get re-hospitalised unnecessarily.”
The Pharmacy Guild’s Queensland Branch will relocate to PACE, which will bring together Australia’s leading pharmacy educators and researchers, the key pharmacy professional organisations and commercial research and development.
The unique project will eventually cover every aspect of the pharmaceutical production line from drug discovery to eventual use, offering world class, co-ordinated and cost-effective research and testing capability.
Professor Tett said PACE would help address a growing worldwide shortage of pharmacy graduates, attract more post-graduate students from Australia and overseas, especially South-East Asia, and allow Australia to bid for more work in testing, formulating and proving new drug discoveries.
“The discovery of molecules is a very small part of taking a drug to market and actually using it effectively,” she said.
“If people have the leads or the compounds, we’ll certainly then have the facilities to take it to the next stage.
“Take the problem of drug formulation: you can have a protein, that’s all very well, but if you take it as is, it’ll just get digested and it won’t be active. So how do you formulate it into such a way that when it gets into your body it will still be in an effective form? That’s the sort of thing that will be enhanced at PACE.”
Professor Shaw said the expertise to be assembled at PACE would also prove cost-effective for multinational companies.
“Australia already does a lot of clinical trials relative to our size and PACE has the ability to enhance that because Australian salaries and our cost of living are so much lower than in the main drug producing nations (United States, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland),” he said.
According to the KPMG report:
“PACE will provide a focus for biotransitional research with an emphasis on commercialisation and marketing, supporting the growth of a valuable domestic industry and the role of pharmaceuticals as an increasingly significant earner of export income for Australia.
“The PACE pharmaceutical-biotech collaborative concepts meets a world-wide trend towards ‘marriages of convenience’ between these previously exclusive industries, as advances in technology rapidly accelerate the pace of drug discovery and human application, and competition in the race to market.
“By providing research facilities and through clustering skilled human resources, PACE will help to build Australia’s research-to-commercialisation industry, an area where the nation has previously lost out to other countries, particularly the United States.”
The Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Professor Peter Brooks paid tribute to Professor Tett’s role in leading the School of Pharmacy to a position where it could capitalise on the opportunities presented by PACE.
“Sue’s played an incredible role,” Professor Brooks said.
“She’s been running the School of Pharmacy for the past eight years, she’s very significantly enhanced the research profile, the profile with government and the profile with the professions.
“And the other great thing that she’s done is that she’s attracted some extraordinarily good young people to join the School of Pharmacy.
”It’s good that both she and Nick as the new head of school will be there for this next stage of the School’s development.”
For more information contact: Lorann Downer (The University of Queensland) 07 3365 1088, 0413 458 317.
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