EAHP represents over 30,000 hospital pharmacists across 37 member countries. EAHP represents and develops the hospital pharmacy profession within Europe in order to ensure the continuous improvement of care and outcomes for patients in the hospital setting. This is achieved through science, research, education, practice, as well as sharing best-practice and responsibility with other healthcare professional
The EAHP Board, elected for three-year terms, oversees the association’s activities. Comprising directors responsible for core functions, it meets regularly to implement strategic goals. Supported by EAHP staff, the Board controls finances, coordinates congress organization, and ensures compliance with statutes and codes of conduct.
The EAHP staff supports the Board in executing EAHP’s mission. The Staff assists in financial management, events organisations, policy activities and all EAHP projects. The EAHP staff works closely with EAHP’s members and ensures the effective communication all relevant stakeholders.
The first member countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands in 1972. EAHP has now 36 EAHP members and 2 Associate Members. EAHP is open to countries members of the Council of Europe and since 2022 to organisations representing the interests of hospital pharmacists from outside the Council of Europe (Associate Membership)
EAHP’s structure is also composed by different standing committes: EAHP Scientific Committee, EAHP Education Executive Committee and the EAHP CTF Steering Committee.
At EAHP, we are committed to transparency in our governance, ethical standards, and funding practices. This section provides open access to our foundational documents, including the EAHP Statutes, Code of Conduct, and Funding Sources. By sharing these resources, we aim to uphold accountability and foster trust with our members, partners, and the public.
Keep up with all EAHP’s events and webinars. Contact the team at info@eahp.eu should you have any questions about upcoming events or activities.
Here you can find all upcoming events organised by EAHP and by all its members and associate members. Do not hesitate to contact the events team at events@eahp.eu should you have any questions about the organisation of these events.
Hospital pharmacists conduct a critical role in the care of patients in hospitals. Learn more about what they do here and in all the pages under Hospital Pharmacy practice and Policy.
Self-Assessment
SILCC
Closed SIGs
EAHP brings together experts from many areas of hospital pharmacy practice providing and highlighting good local sustainable practices as that can be up-scaled and shared with other countries. The EAHP Working Group on Sustainability has the aim of reducing the environmental burden of the hospital pharmacy services.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), and its 36 member country platforms are creating a Common Training Framework for the hospital pharmacy education in Europe. The goal of this project is to allow the free movement of hospital pharmacists within the European Union.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP) have collaboratively developed the Oath to Society. The Oath to Society is all encompassing and acts as a contract for excellence in providing compassionate patient care, working as part of the healthcare team and advancing the pharmacy profession, and showcasing how clinical and hospital pharmacists work every day
A day created to highlight the importance and to celebrate the work done by hospital pharmacies. This day celebrates all hospital pharmacy teams.
Catch up with EAHP’s press releases
Find all EAHP relevant publication like the EAHP Surveys, annual reports and the history books.
The European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (EJHP) is the only official journal of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and is committed to advancing the science, practice and profession of hospital pharmacy. As the premier communication platform for hospital pharmacists worldwide, EJHP is a major source for continuing education as well as updates on advances in the practice and standard of pharmaceutical care for patients.
When EAHP and Hospital pharmacists appear in the news.
EAHP publishes a monthly EU monitor with updates about the latest EAHP initiatives and information relevant for the hospital pharmacy profession.
Sponsor Channel
The Sponsor Channel is designed to maximise visibility and engagement, allowing sponsors to connect with the hospital pharmacy community and partners in a dynamic and interactive environment. From product demonstrations to networking sessions, the Sponsor Channel offers a range of opportunities for sponsors to showcase their offerings and generate leads in the new EAHP Website.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Juan Campillo, Manuel Bonete, Marta Zayas, Maria Molina, Laura Barrajón, Cristina Martínez, Ángela Rizo, Maria Ángeles Bernabeu, Maria Teresa Aznar
Medication errors (ME) occur in different phases of the drug circuit: prescription (16%), transcription (27%), validation, preparation, dispensing (48%) and administration (9%). The AEP is a tool to guarantee the safety of this circuit, being able to avoid up to 65% of ME. There is also a learning curve in new users of an AEP, confirming the need for support to reduce ME.
1-Maintenance of the Assisted Electronic Prescription Program (AEP)
2-Implementation in 11 wards and in the Emergency Department of a 396-bed tertiary hospital
3-Training
4-To set a pilot AEP
5-Reeducation strategies
1- 1465 drugs included in the Pharmacotherapeutic Guide were configured. 3 levels of danger were created for Hazardous Drugs (HD) and the recommendations for their preparation / administration were agreed upon. The Therapeutic Exchange Guide was integrated into 443 drugs (761 exchange proposals).
2- It started in the Emergency Department and every week a new ward with AEP was opened.Paper was eliminated throughout the circuit, drug dispensing trolleys were modified and a computer was fitted to record administrations at the bedside.114 pharmacotherapeutic protocols were created.
3- A technical training program, changes in procedures, schedules and training documents were designed. 72 sessions were given to 346 physicians and 88 sessions to 543 nurses.
4- 490 incidents were reported, prioritizing the most urgent (compromising patient safety). 224 claims to expedite resolutions. We also collaborated with other hospitals.
5- Welcome plan to train new staff and annual sessions. A tutorial video to focus on the points that caused the most errors was recorded. Preparation of new documents to report the changes.
First hospital to implement computerized administration. Elimination of transcription errors. Improved administration security. Greater visibility of the pharmacist and participation in decision-making. Contribution to development of the AEP and its implementation in 15 more hospitals.
Monitoring the necessary interventions to develop educational strategies when a growing trend is observed. Improve the welcome plan. Continue piloting the new AEP versions Follow the evolution of pending incidents. Evaluate the impact of the educational strategy of the tutorial video.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Sonja Guntschnig
The aim of this good practice initiative (GPI) was to identify local resistance patterns, improve prescribing quality, reduce hospital costs, calculate antibiotic use data, track problem organisms, infection clusters and enable transfer chains tracing.
With the introduction of a new antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) group into Tauernklinikum, Zell am See, a new informatics tool called HyBase® by epiNet AG was implemented to establish an interface linking microbiological results, consumption of antimicrobials, the hospital infections surveillance system “Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System”(KISS) and the hospitals antimicrobial resistance data. AMS teams need suitable AMS surveillance systems to track intervention changes and measure results.
After purchasing release by the hospital management, HyBase needed an interface with several IT system providers, namely the internal microbiology laboratory (KISS software), System Application and Product in processing (SAP), and two external microbiology laboratories.
Antibiotic consumption figures were obtained retrospectively by calculating defined daily doses (DDD). This also gave insight into problematic use of certain antibiotics and indicated potential for antibiotic restriction.
Antimicrobial resistance patterns were displayed, which led to the introduction of infection control and AMS measures. Alert organism surveillance data was obtained and evaluated for different wards.
Learning from this implementation will enable changes in antimicrobial prescribing which will lead to improvements, both in healthcare quality and patient safety as well as a potential reduction in prescribing costs. Alert organism clusters will be detectable as will be transfer chains in the healthcare setting. It will also allow for the introduction of infection control agent stewardship for example by testing hand disinfection compliance or recording the spread of surface adherent organisms.
This GPI addresses the WHO antimicrobial resistance global action plan and local antimicrobial medicines concerns. It may prove useful for other healthcare settings and can be easily implemented to obtain data necessary for robust effective antimicrobial stewardship.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Cristina González Pérez, Laura Llorente Sanz, Ángel Liras Medina, Ana Andrea García Sacristán, María Molinero Muñoz, Lidia Ybañez García, José Alberto Peña Pedrosa, Henar González Luengo, María Luaces Méndez, José Manuel Martínez Sesmero
Telepharmacy implementation in the context of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic conducted us through the management of a high volume of complex, real-time both clinical and economic data. A multidisciplinary working group (biomedical engineers from the Innovation Unit, clinicians, managers and hospital pharmacists) developed a software tool in April-May 2021.
The design of an agile, customizable and dynamic dashboard for the visualization and analysis of Telepharmacy key performance indicators (KPI) through Business Intelligence (BI).
Phases:
1. Situation analysis. KPI definition. Ethics committee approval submission.
2. Extraction and processing of raw databases (Telepharmacy database, outpatient dispensing program, hospital admission database, drug catalog) through data mining.
3. Co-creation of the comprehensive dashboard in PowerBI®, by integrating database sources. Different panels have been designed where filters such as age, time frame, medical service, pathology, etc. can be applied.
• Description of general variables: patients, demography, shipments, time frame, medical department.
• Geolocation of the destinations of the patients’ home delivery.
• Pharmacological profile: top 10 drugs, distribution by active ingredient and drug classification group.
• Relative analysis of the beneficiary patients of Telepharmacy vs global outpatients
4. Pilot project by different types of users (administrative staff, clinicians and managers)
5. Structure design for automatic updating of the panels from the successive updates of the source databases
The quality of the raw databases can be a limitation. It has been necessary to define how to handle missing and duplicate data. Pre-processing, normalization and transformation data processes have been applied too.
Working within the hospital network ensures that there are no security gaps in terms of patient data protection.
For the external use of the dashboard, the granularity of the data is modulated to ensure enough clustering to avoid the identification of individual patients.
Processing the huge dataset (more than 2.4 million records) was possible by BI tools that synthesizes data, provides dynamic and engaging visualization (charts and graphs), allows the interactive reports customization for more effective communication of results and apply analysis based on Artificial Intelligence.
Applying new technologies will help us improve strategic decisions: interactions, behaviors and trends perceiving, weak points identifying, uncertainty reducing and over time monitoring.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Mª Ángeles Parro Martín, Beatriz Montero Llorente, Teresa Gramage Caro, Manuel Vélez Díaz-Pallarés, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Sagrado, Hilario Martínez Barros, Ana María Álvarez Díaz
To ensure continuity of treatment and pharmacotherapeutic follow-up in patients vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection included in a home delivery and telepharmacy program.
Implementation and adaptation of home delivery and telepharmacy during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A work procedure was designed to detail the new functions to be performed by administrative assistants (AA), pharmacy technicians (PT) and pharmacists (PH). A first procedure was designed, which was adapted and improved after 6 months of experience, giving rise to procedure 2.
Procedure 1
– AA phone call to patients scheduled to obtain consent for home delivery and confirm delivery data.
– The PH grouped patients who had confirmed home delivery in the appointment manager.
– The PH reviewed the electronic prescription of all patients and performed telepharmacy to those who were due and/or had incidents.
– The PT prepared the packages.
Procedure 2
Phase 1
– The AA called all patients scheduled until the end of the year to offer them the option of remaining in the home delivery and telepharmacy program permanently. If they accepted, their consent and delivery data were recorded. From this point on, the call to offer home delivery and telepharmacy was discontinued; it was only offered to patients when they attended in person.
– A specific diary for home delivery patients was created.
– The telepharmacytelepharmacy was added to the PH diary.
Phase 2
– Trained PT in home delivery incident resolution (address changes, absent patients, package rejection) to reduce FAR’s working hours.
Phase 3
– Development of a computer application: computerization of manual processes (labels, identification of refrigerated shipments, SMS delivery confirmation sent to patients, and request for appointment changes).
31,066 home delivery have been performed on 7,170 different patients. 7,443 telepharmacy consultations have been performed.
PT training and computer development has reduced the PH dedication from 7 hours to 3 hours.
Establish criteria for prioritization of patients who are candidates for home delivery and telepharmacy.
Implementation of video call instead of telepharmacy
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Joana Russo, Maria João Ribeiro, Humberto Gonçalves, Joana Ribeiro, Silva Cristina, António Gouveia
In our country the oncology medication for ambulatory patients is dispensed by the hospital pharmacist (HP). Due to several aspects (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic) the process of distribution of said medication has changed in that the HP and the patient no longer meet face to face (Drive-thru systems, proximity projects in which the medication is sent to a nearby pharmacy of the patients living area). A tool was required that enabled the HPs to continue to monitor the relevant clinical aspects (patient education; medication adherence (MA), drug interactions (DI) and adverse events (AE) evaluation).
We used a mobile application (App) to conduct the pharmaceutical evaluation of clinical aspects that need to be considered when dispensing oncology medication.
In collaboration with the Information Technologies department of our hospital, an App was developed. It integrates the patient’s hospital prescriptions and their answers to an adaptive query that identifies cases that need further clinical data We selected a specific drug (ibrutinib) and developed an algorithm that presented the extended questions accordingly. The App was announced to patients that required hospital medication and wanted to receive it through an alternative method of distribution.
In little over a year, a total of 1720 requests were received (668 patients). The algorithm was successful in differentiating patients whose evaluation needed to include additional clinical information. In 22 requests, further data was automatically gathered (9 patients) enabling us to evaluate MA, DI and AE. These teleconsultations do not require additional professionals (ie an assistant to register the request) nor a compatible time slot for a pharmacist-patient phone call.
The results showed that the concept of pharmaceutical teleconsultations through an App is viable and we intend to extend its range to other drugs and to dissociate the teleconsultation from the dispensing request. This approached also showed that proximity between HP and patients was positively affected allowing patients to consult their hospital pharmacist whenever they need to and wherever the patient was.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Noe Garin, Laia Lopez-Vinardell, Pau Riera, Adrian Plaza, Ivan Castellvi-Barranco, Jose Mateo-Arranz, M. Antonia Mangues
APS is a rare disease with a high risk of thromboembolism. Recently, some data suggested an increased risk of thrombotic events with direct-acting anticoagulants (DOAC) compared with vitamin K antagonists in APS. Some agencies advise against the use of DOACs in these patients.
This methodology can be extrapolated to other risk situations, so this was a first step with AI to further detection of safety issues.
We implemented an Artificial intelligence (AI) tool based on natural language processing (SAVANA®) to identify patients at risk of thromboembolism, defined as Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) diagnosis treated with direct-acting anticoagulants (DOAC). SAVANA® is an AI tool able to extract information contained in free-text from electronic clinical records.
A prior operation work was conducted, involving: direction, pharmacy, documentation, IT, SAVANA®, data protection. The work and previous meetings evaluated: feasibility, previous requirements, privacy issues, IT involvement and contract signings.
The implementation consisted of:
– Transference of medical record information to the SAVANA® cloud.
– Identification of the health problem (APS) and initial search.
– Search algorithm optimization in a multidisciplinary team.
– Evaluation of the search by SAVANA® by peer review in a sample of randomly selected cases (n=200).
– Precision and sensitivity analysis. Algorithm improvement.
– Obtaining the Gold Standard and validation.
– Definitive search for the detection of patients with APS in treatment with DOACs and performance of interventions.
The project implementation is at a very advanced stage. The algorithm has currently been evaluated and is being refined after precision and sensitivity analysis. Final validation and definitive identification of patients at risk is expected at the end of 2021. Patients detected during the implementation method have been evaluated with the haematology team.
This methodology can be implemented in any centre with computerized medical records. The use of AI is the only tool available for the identification of certain groups of patients when health problems are not coded. In other cases, its use regarding the extraction of lists allows a great capacity for analysis, absence of biases derived from human error, guarantee of reproducibility and complementary data obtention, mainly in samples of high size.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
JUDIT PERALES PASCUAL, HERMINIA NAVARRO AZNAREZ, ANA LOPEZ PEREZ, LUCIA CAZORLA PODEROSO, IRENE AGUILO LAFARGA, ANA PEÑAS FERNANDEZ, Mª REYES ABAD SAZATORNIL
Despite the volume of patients seen at UPEX, the complexity of care and the cost of the treatments, in 2019 the prescription was transcribed by pharmacists with the consequent risk/investment of time that this entails. The aim was to incorporate organizational/technological changes that would improve the safety and quality of pharmaceutical care.
An outpatient is a patient who goes to the outpatient unit of their Hospital Pharmacy Service (UPEX) to collect a drug for hospital use/diagnosis or foreign drug (it will be administered without health personnel intervention).
We collaborated in the design and validation of the PresSalud®(Dominion®) program, developing the implementation of assisted electronic prescribing (AEP) as an objective in the SAMPA project (Registration and Promotion Service for Adherence to Medications for Elderly Patients).
Access from the electronic medical record to the prescription, the integration of the latter with the dispensing program and the latter with the pharmacy item program guarantees an increase in the safety of medication use by incorporating clinical decision aids.
Different prescription assistance protocols were developed. Presentations and sessions were given to hospital doctors explaining how to prescribe through PresSalud® adapting them to the different services implemented with AEP.
In 2018, the AEP was implemented in the infectious, digestive, dermatology, rheumatology, neurology and hematology service (only in hemophilia consultations). Between May-September 2020, it was expanded. It is currently 92.3% implemented and 100% is expected by the end of 2021 (with the rest hematology consultations).
Currently, the percentage of prescriptions to outpatients using AEP with respect to the total prescriptions in this area is 83%; this increase contributes to avoid errors in transcription and to reduce the time spent in checking the prescription, providing greater safety in the use of the medication and better patient care which translates into higher quality of care.
The implementation of the AEP guarantees safe and efficient prescription; in short, the organizational/technological changes that this entails contribute to improving the quality of pharmaceutical care received by the patient. The proposed solution can be easily extended to other hospitals implementing AEP.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Ghalib Abbasi
As we venture into the 2020s, health-system pharmacies need to consider these novel approaches to deliver pharmaceutical care to their patients given the changing population needs, lifestyles, and available home technologies accessible to most patients. The ultimate goals are to enhance patient safety, increase hospital pharmacy operational efficiency, and maximize revenue.
Novel technologies were implemented at Houston Methodist to enhance patient safety and experience. These include voice-activated devices in patient rooms, smart glasses for pharmacists, smart phones for hospital pharmacy service provision, artificial intelligence, and tele-health
Careful infrastructure considerations/build took place along with pharmacist-driven algorithm write-up. During this GPI, we’d like to discuss specific steps to make this happen along with sensible benefits we realized from implementing each technology.
Our hospital pharmacists got significantly more involved in direct patient care where notable efficiencies were realized on the operational side. In addition, medication education was significantly enhanced with improved patient access to their in-house hospital pharmacist.
Next steps include deploying these these technologies to further service lines and patient care areas, as well as investing into further meaningful technologies. We’ll review what’s in the pipeline as well.
Introductory Statements and Governance
ARDIZONE BEATRIZ, MARTA HERNÁNDEZ SEGURADO, MARÍA FORTE PÉREZ-MINAYO, LAURA GARCÍA JIMÉNEZ, ELENA TORTAJADA ESTEBAN, ANA CORDERO GUIJARRO, NATALIA BARRERAS RUIZ, LAURA JIMÉNEZ NAVARRO, JAVIER BÉCARES MARTÍNEZ
First, we had a high number of patient inquiries by phone and by email. Furthermore, patient queries related with their treatment and their resolution were not recorded in the electronic clinical history. Finally, we needed a communication platform that would guarantee personal data privacy.
In collaboration with the IT department, we developed a software tool called “Web Dialogue” within the e-health portal of our institution. This tool allows the patients to communicate with the pharmacist using a chat box where they can write queries about drug interactions, adverse effects and any questions about the hospital dispensing treatments, as well as other medications and herbal products. A pharmacist answers the queries within 24 hours, from Monday to Friday.
We asked the IT department to activate this tool for all active patients to whom we dispensed medication in our service (a total of 8000 patients). The development lasted 2 years (2017-2019), but it was not until March 2020, with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, that the “Web Dialogue” began to be used by our patients more widely. We also made an informative video that was posted on the e-health portal in order to achieve a wider knowledge of this tool among patients. See link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9pd93sNY8
The median number of messages per month in 2020-2021 was 202 (IQR= 100,5; 468). At the beginning of the state of alarm in Spain there was a peak in the use of the “Web Dialogue”, mainly to query about how to access the medication (94% of the queries). Over the following months, the proportion of these consultations decreased and consultations regarding doubts about treatment, adverse effects and drug interactions increased. Furthermore, the Net Promoter Score (NPS), an indicator that allows us to measure the satisfaction of patients, shows that in the last year we have achieved, for the first time, a score over 60, which is considered excellent.
Some of our ideas for the future are: the possibility of selecting the type of inquiry and the interlocutor by the patient, creating algorithms for the automatic response of certain questions and carrying out Big Data research studies.
Production and Compounding
Mathilde Roche, Annabelle Angapin, Vincent Blazy, Alexandre Hyvert, Loretta Moriconi, Matteo Federici, Bintou Diawara, Cindy Monnel, Lison Ferreol, Assia Mitha, Hail Aboudagga, Romain Desmaris
Initially, robot’s operations required prescription re-transcription and chemotherapy relabelling by technicians, leading to manual data entry risks. Robots are known for high-standardised procedures, great repeatability and limited human intervention: adding bidirectional interface enabled improvement of patient safety. Moreover, it shows significant benefits during the compounding process, streamlining pharmacy workflows and ensuring full and paperless traceability.
In 2018, our chemotherapy production unit implemented an automated anticancer drugs compounding platform, embedding two APOTECAchemo robots. This aims to meet the increasing patient-specific chemotherapy demands (78,000 preparations/year). In order to minimise human risk and optimise work efficiency, implementation of a bidirectional interface between the robots and the hospital’s Electronic Prescribing Software (EPS) was considered as mandatory, to allow exchange and clinical information retrieval.
In 2020, pharmacists and the IT team defined the interface specifications. Bidirectional information flow was implemented using Health Level Seven (HL7) standards. Interface between EPS and APOTECAmanager was developed and a comparative robot performance analysis was undertaken by evaluating processed drug products, compounded preparation numbers and actual average usage time per day. The staff (i.e. two technicians) remained identical. Data were retrieved from robot’s embedded statistical tool over three months, before (March-May 2020) and after interface implementation (July-September 2020).
During these six months, 13,746 preparations were compounded, with 95% infusion bags and 5% elastomeric pumps. Most of these preparations were produced in advance (administration on day+2 or day+3). After interface implementation, the average production raised by 40.5% (from 1,905 to 2,676/month). Interface implementation increased also the average robot operating hours from 3.6 hours/day/robot to 5.8 hours/day/robot (+61.1%). In total, 19 different molecules were compounded, including conventional anticancer drugs and monoclonal antibodies with the number of reconstituted drug vials increasing by 38.1% (from 625 to 863).
Interface between robots and the EPS was successfully implemented, thereby enabling improved safety and efficiency. Today, syringes and paediatric preparations are still made manually. They require visual and analytical controls to verify their conformity. Mid 2021, a third robot customized for syringes and paediatric preparations will be installed in the compounding unit, to secure these preparations in a more efficient way.
