EAHP represents over 29,000 hospital pharmacists across 36 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 professionals.
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 of Germany 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.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Moisés Couñago-Fernández, Marisol Samartín-Ucha, Ana María Regueira-Arcay, Sonia González-Costas, María Alfonsín-Lara, Paula Prado-Montes, Iván Agra-Blanco, Elena Cerdeira-Regueira, Noemí Martínez-López de Castro
When a new pharmaceutical product should be introduced in a hospital, a multitude of factors must be considered in order to choose a specific brand. A lack of uniformity in the criteria for the selection of new medicines has been detected. To avoid selection errors or arbitrary decisions, a selection structured algorithm was developed using quality tools according to management quality system ISO 9001-2015.
To ensure that the process of selecting from several pharmaceutical companies fulfil the requirements of quality and lower cost, a decision-making process for these purchases was designed, through a structured method for the evaluation of new pharmaceutical products based on standardised evaluation criteria.
A multidisciplinary group was created focused on making decisions about criteria. All stakeholders were represented (management pharmacist, quality experts, management assistant and pharmacy director). Also, a survey was given to different specialist pharmacists to complete the criteria. Second, criteria were categorised according to their importance or potential impact in pharmacy practice or patient.
The algorithm took into account aspects related to: a)pharmaceutical company and b)aspects related to the pharmaceutical product. Each of these aspects is valued as a percentage.
a)Pharmaceutical company: 40% of the score was based on not having a repeated history of stock-outs, 45% on the evaluation of the provider according to an internal file based on incidences registered, and 15% if the provider was already a known supplier.
b)Pharmaceutical product: 50% was based on the cost of the medicine, 15% unit dose presentation (if applicable), 10% expiry conditions of the medicine, 5% allergens, 5% if it was presented in a pre-filled pen (if applicable), 5% if it could be stored at room temperature, 5% if the drug is supplied in diluted vials (in the case of parenteral medicines) and 5% if it had all the possible indications in the technical data sheet.
This methodology has been used successfully in recent months with the pharmaceutical supplier changes of abiraterone and sugammadex.
This tool will be used for all changes of medicine brands and new drugs purchased in the hospital, enabling uniformity in the purchasing process for all new drugs.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Lone Møller Deleuran, Bitten Abildtrup, Sofie Pedersen, Ulrik Wøldike, Nina Winther Müller
Amgros is committed to make its mark on the sustainability agenda regarding medicine – both nationally and internationally. Thereby improving access to medicines for patients in a more sustainable way – this project serves as a first step in this direction.
In 2021, the Danish procurement organisation Amgros I/S issued the first national pilot tender for hospital medicines in which environment was an important award criterion along with price. Amgros procures 99% of the pharmaceuticals used at public hospitals. The pilot project was conducted to gain knowledge and experience about planning and executing future tenders with environmental criteria. The pilot tender was limited to the hormonal therapeutic area.
The chosen environmental criteria were environmental management, packaging (plastics and paper/cardboard), transportation and social responsibility.
It was a long process, including external help from consultants (The Technical University of Denmark), legal consultation, market dialogue with feedback, developing and adjusting the criteria to comply with national procurement legislation. Hence assuring the evaluation of the offers could be conducted in a meaningful, simple, and structured manner during the subsequent evaluation phase.
As a part of the final tender, a questionnaire was attached consisting of multiple choice questions concerning the environmental criteria. In the evaluation, the price weighed 80%, whereas the environmental criteria weighed 20%.
Amgros received 85 offers from 19 suppliers of which 76 offers contained the questionnaire about environment. Sixteen (84%) of the bidding suppliers completed the questionnaire. Three suppliers won the tender solely due to their environmental capability.
The tender with environmental criteria did not seem to discourage suppliers from bidding nor resulted in increasing price levels.
The pilot tender has created a great deal of awareness among the suppliers about the importance of environment and sustainability in production, distribution, and sales of medicine.
The experience obtained from this pilot tender is paving the way for the future broader implementation of more sustainable medicines in all tenders. Furthermore, the results will be shared nationally and internationally. Hopefully, the results will encourage other countries to incorporate environmental criteria in future medicinal tendering processes.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Mirna Momcilovic, Anita Simic, Petra Turcic
Croatia was hit by 2 big earthquakes in 2020, both happened just right after 1st and 2nd lockdown due to high number of COVID-19 cases. Since most of the hospitals were strategically built on the hills, it was more destructive for them. It also hit a number of community pharmacies responsible for drugs supply to specific areas in the country. There was no electricity, no heating, no drugs supply, no fridge to store drugs, for days, so quick back-up plan was needed to provide minimal healthcare.
Croatian hospital pharmacists organised a temporary pharmacy in a tent, filled it with drugs and medical products donated from community pharmacies, hospitals and wholesalers from Croatia and other European countries and started supplying patients with it.
It was modified way of dispensing, without prescription because there was no doctors and no place to prescribe it, based on patient’s medical documentation, if available, and patient’s medication history according to what patient said only. Pharmacists needed to use their knowledge about dosing, duration of action – difference between immediate release or modified release formulations, possibility of splitting tablets into equal parts to get the needed dose and, most important, substituting drugs from the same pharmacologic class (ex. switching from one inhaler for treatment of asthma containing ICS + LABA to another one that was available at the moment), taking into consideration patient’s needs and avoiding drug to drug interactions. Pharmacists provided patients with OTC drugs, free of charge, followed by an advice of how to use it. Non having prescription problem was solved afterwards by Croatian Health Insurance Fund. Also, all the supply of vaccine against COVID-19 available in Croatia at that point, was sent to an area hit by the earthquake. Vaccination was done by doctors, and pharmacists assisted by supplying them with all the equipment needed (needles, alcohol, cotton wool, etc.).
Patients were supplied by all the drugs/medical products needed in the first, critical week after an earthquake.
Following the Croatian example of handling an earthquake situation, there is an idea of organising a medical crisis team, would include pharmacist, in each European country.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Alison Anastasi, Karl Farrugia
The amount of shortages was considerable leading to interruption of treatment, hoarding, wastage, hospital admissions incurring more expenses. Malta is one of the small EU Member states and its geographical position does not facilitate sourcing. Thereby on analysing the matter further, walking directly into the chaos creating order, inventing, creating, connecting and making things happen was the mainstay since then. The industry accepted the partnership invitation and sourcing increased both from the local and international scenario. Best in class operational efficiency, quality & functional excellence was achieved. According to the National Audit office in 2012, Malta had a recurring issue with shortages of medicines and now in 2016 we have had nil shortages for 30 weeks.
1. Establishment of a dedicated team – Emergency Response Unit (ERU)
2. Enterprise Resource Planning inventory management
3. Customer demand forecast modelling
4. Partnership with the industry
5. Innovative procurement strategies e.g. negotiations, therapeutic time-based agreements, e-auctioning, framework agreements, managed entry access
6. Registration: Allowing bidders to register after they were awarded the tender; parallel importation
The challenges faced included influencing and providing leadership to partners in the delivery of on demand innovative solutions, strategic sourcing involving language translations, registering medicines by the department, demand supplier relationships, payment within 60 days, ageing population, procurement services revenue and profit growth. The winning strategy foundation was the interaction and integration of people (internal and external stakeholders) to business information and business intelligence.
The department has achieved good results measured by the number of shortages, better quality of life, by reduction of hospital admissions thereby reduction in costs. The average medicine shortages in 2013 was 56; in 2014 (40); in 2015 (5) and in 2016 (1) till October. The budget allocated per year has increased due to longevity however more patients are being treated and the cost savings lead to innovative technology access.
Having mitigation measures in place such as pre-planned need analysis; choosing the right process; reducing unnecessary care and focusing on sustainability is good practice. Locally this is being implemented for the procurement of non-medicines and in fact cost savings running into millions have resulted.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
L. Munck
Globally, we are facing an increasing amount of drug shortages, even though international regulatory authorities take initiatives to improve this.
We have national order data available through one national organisation that manages all tenders and backorders for drug supplies to all hospital pharmacies.
Access to order data enabled us to start this improvement initiative in May 2014, and hence fight the backorder challenge at the national level.
We applied LEAN and Supplier Collaboration to turn around the trend of increasing amount of drug backorders to hospital pharmacies.
Our initiative consisted of tight follow-up and continuous improvements with ‘TOP6-suppliers’, (ie, the 6 suppliers with currently the most negative impact on our national drug supply).
‘TOP6-suppliers’ are selected each week at LEAN board meetings.
Tight supplier follow-up, by e-mail, weekly:
We informed the ‘TOP6-suppliers’ that they currently are among the suppliers with the most backorders, and asked them to:
• Confirm/update delivery dates for all open backorders
• Inform us of the underlying reason for each backorder
The suppliers continue to receive weekly emails, as long as they are selected as ‘TOP6-supplier’.
Continuous improvement meetings, face-to-face, quarterly:
We had meetings with the 3 suppliers with the highest level of backorders/poorest level of improvements.
Meeting agenda: Reasons behind current backorder situation and actions to improve.
Obstacles—>Our solutions:
Too busy managing actual backorders and no time to drive improvements—>Added one dedicated resource to drive this initiative.
How to manage our effort—>Develop leading key performance indicators (KPIs) that ensure focus on influence and improvements.
We were not always confident that our effort would provide the expected results—>Continue to focus on the agreed approach and KPIs, even if it takes approximately 12 months before we achieve improvements.
• Backorder amount decreased by 25%.
• 3rd quarter2014: On average, 99 item-numbers in backorder (range 87-117).
• 3rd quarter 2015: On average, 74 item-numbers in backorder (range 67-99).
• Closer dialogue and improved cooperation with our suppliers with most/critical backorders.
1. Share achievements.
2. Start an international network to share best practices.
3. Together achieve further improvements in drug supply.
