News of the 2013 EACPT Congress in Geneva

@HealthMed The EACPT's next biennial congress will be held in beautiful Geneva, 28th - 31st August in 2013 at the International Congress Centre of Geneva (CICG).

Registration will open 10^th November 2012.
Abstract submissions will also open 10^th November 2012 and will close 8^th February 2013.

To receive updates on the congress before registering, you can submit your email address to the congress organisers.
Over 900 participants are expected to attend including health professionals, scientists, policy makers, biotechnology and pharmaceutical professionals and others interested in basic and clinical pharmacology, pharmacotherapy, drug discovery and development, regulatory affairs and related areas.

Geneva by the lake

Key themes at the congress will range from bedside pharmacology for special patient groups to pharmacology & toxicology, and pharmacology and society. Specific topics will include sessions on communicating with the public, ethics, safe prescribing, clinical trial design and governance, and health policy; new biologicals, translational medicine and pharmacogenetics; advances in personalised diagnostics to improve the safety and effectiveness of medicines, updates on new biological approaches to ocular disease, therapeutics of cardiovascular, cancer and inflammatory disease, clinical trial design and regulation, and drug safety and toxicology. 

The European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) has its origins in a working party in the early 1980s under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO-Europe). The EACPT's next biennial congresses after Geneva 2013 are in Madrid 2015 and in Prague 2017. The EACPT also arranges summer schools, and other scientific and professional activities.

For more on the Congress, how to contact the organisers, and how to register to receive updates, see:

Congress Website: http://www.eacpt2013.org

Secretariat email: eacptreg@mci-group.com

Assessing prescribing skills

@HealthMed Doctors and other prescribers internationally find prescribing challenging. To get this right at times of high pressure, including in the emergency medicine setting, it is vital that basic skills are as well developed as possible. Add to that the need for care in calculation, avoiding the distracting effects of multi-tasking, challenges in medicines reconciliation, and risks inherent in shift-working and other complex work patterns. And electronic prescribing systems alone are not a sufficient safeguard. For example, reporting from the USA indicates that error rates may increase following the move from paper to electronic prescribing. The complex range of skills needed for safe and effective prescribing includes sound core knowledge of basic mechanisms of drug action, drug use in the clinical setting, and the impact of patient genetics, age, gender, lifestyle, the disease to be treated as well as co-existing medical conditions and the impact of other drugs and remedies. Many of these principles are easier to put into practice by adopting a personalized approach to therapeutics, with the aim of prescribing the right drug or drugs at the right dose to the right patient for the right disease and at the right time.

To help to increase focus on early training in essential prescribing principles and practice, in the United Kingdom the British Pharmacological Society and the Medical Schools Council supported by a national team of experts, to develop a Prescribing Skills Assessment that will eventually allow all students to rehearse and demonstrate competencies relevant to safe and effective initiation, monitoring, review and, when needed change in route, dose, duration or type of medicines alone and in combination in clinical practice, along with skills in communicating key points about medicines to patients, their carers and to relevant health professional colleagues.

See related blogs on
- Improving prevention of serious adverse drug reactions 
- Personalized medicine for better drug discovery