The Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy (SEFH) and the biotechnology company Biogen, recently organized a meeting on multiple sclerosis aimed at hospital pharmacists throughout Spain. Under the title “Multiple Effect 3.0. Multiplying MS patient options. A new horizon for pharmaceutical care”the event served as a meeting point to discuss the advances of this pathology, a space for training and exchange of experiences in the care of patients MS patient.
access to a personalized medicine, the simplification and improvement of the management of patients with multiple sclerosis served as a guideline for the development of the session. Throughout it, Dr. Iciar Martinez Lopezcoordinator of the Genetics and Genomics Unit of the Balearic Islands (Genib), hospital pharmacist and member of Geafen-SEFH, spoke of the “complexity” of the pathology and its impact “at the health, social and economic level”. A scenario which, he assures, “determines the form of action and the involvement of different types of professionalsfrom health professionals to social and government agents”.
Access to personalized medicine, simplification and improvement of the management of patients with multiple sclerosis served as a guideline for the development of the session.
Faced with this pathology, Dr. Martínez López recalls that: “Hospital Pharmacy develops more than thousand health gestures that society should know. One of them, the specialized care that applies to the path of the patient with MS”. Hence, he insists, the importance of “giving voice” to the specialty and “making visible” its role in the multidisciplinary approach of MS patients.
For its part, Ramon Morillo Verdugo Doctor of Pharmacy from the Virgen de Valme University Hospital in Seville, made reference during the event to the evolution of the specialty in recent years. In this sense, he recognizes that they are currently carrying out their work with a more clinical view and that involvement and participation are more important “both in drug therapy and in its management by patients”. He also underlined the “importance” of multidisciplinary approach and to be part of these teams.
Innovation and adherence to treatment
As part of the conference, the evolution and paradigm shift that has happened in multiple sclerosis in recent years through innovation. In the words of the doctor Angel Arevalospecialist pharmacist in the pharmacy department of the Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona: “Important progress has been made in the therapeutic approach to multiple sclerosis, with a quantitative and qualitative increase in the therapeutic arsenal at our disposal to deal with the disease”.
“Important advances have been made in the therapeutic approach to multiple sclerosis, with a quantitative and qualitative increase in the therapeutic arsenal available to us to deal with the disease.”
Dr Arévalo also stressed the importance of pharmacotherapeutic innovation for his “involvement” in the development of new “effective and safe” drugs that increasingly take into account the aspects of tolerance and patient comfort. In this sense, the specialist pointed out that “innovation plays a very important role in the patient adherence to treatment”. A scenario in which, for Arévalo, “the best knowledge of the pathophysiology of the disease over the last decade and the early treatment of patients with effective drugs” have a lot to do with it.