Key Opinion Leader Meeting - Key Takeaways

Innovators of Personalized Medicine Event in Helsinki June 13th - 14th 2024

Last week we hosted an event about the future of personalized medicines. Pharmacists and physicians from 12 countries participated in the event over two days.

Key takeaways:

• There is an enormous need for personalized medicine and practical solutions enabling better manufacturing methods are needed. In some countries nurses at the ward are allowed to distribute drugs mixed with food or juice, but pharmacists can’t do the same and are pressed with tougher quality requirements. This leads to situations where nurses are spending time on crushing tablets and mixing them in to for instance juice, without any knowledge on what this does to the physicochemical properties of the drug and dosage form.
• 40 % of participants think that the biggest problem with current compounding manufacturing methods is that quality control is limited. We heard examples of how oral suspension mixes are commonly trusted on the market, although there are problems related to taste, stability and potential for dosing errors.
• Clinicians and pharmacists need to collaborate and drive the change together. In some countries the collaboration between pharmacists and physicians is close and functioning well, whereas in some countries there is not much collaboration.
• Especially children are underserved when it comes to registered drugs. Big pharma does not have financial motivation to register drugs in doses which are suitable for children. There are many examples of what this leads to; for instance pregnant mothers mixing harmful drugs at home or no treatment at all.
  
• Personalization is crucial also for elderly patients, in gender medicine as well as in oncology and veterinary preparations.
• The preparedness for new innovations varies between countries, institutions and even people working at the same institution. Let’s think “how can we make this possible” instead of “this is not possible”.
• Compounding pharmacists play a critical role in managing drug shortages and after the COVID-19 pandemic the preparedness is much better. However more work is needed and compounding pharmacists deserve more credit for the work they do.
• Regulators are positive and there are many examples of this from different countries.

Thanks to all participants, together we can change things for the benefit of patients!

Psst.. If you think that this looks like an even that you would like to attend in the future, please send us a message at sales@curifylabs.com and we will make sure to keep you posted.