Canadian Pharmacists Association partners with Pharmapod, invests in medication error reporting platform
Investment a commitment to improve patient safety through better medication error reporting
May 3, 2018 (Ottawa): The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) today announced its investment in Pharmapod – a medication error reporting platform that is already playing a vital role in improving patient safety and supporting pharmacists across the globe in tracking and reducing medication errors.
“We are very pleased to announce this exciting partnership with Pharmapod, who is recognized as a world leader in patient safety,” said Alistair Bursey, Chair, Canadian Pharmacists Association. “Enhancing patient safety is one of the core foundations of CPhA’s vision and we are dedicated to supporting the adoption of patient safety strategies and tools to support pharmacists across Canada and around the world.”
The investment is a further commitment to patient safety and builds upon the existing partnership between CPhA and Pharmapod to deliver a new mandatory error reporting system in the province of Ontario, announced in October 2017. Following today’s announcement, CPhA will become a minority investor with one seat on the Pharmapod Board of Directors.
Designed, built and backed by pharmacists, the Pharmapod platform has demonstrated value in Europe as a very robust medication error reporting platform for the collection and analysis of medication incidents. The cloud-based solution is intuitive and empowers pharmacists to identify risks and continuously improve their practice.
Founder and CEO Leonora O’Brien says the CPhA-Pharmapod partnership is an exciting one for health care – “It has always been the Pharmapod vision to be a professionally led solution and CPhA is the uniting national voice of pharmacy and the pharmacist profession in Canada. Medication errors are a huge problem across the entire health care system. As the medication experts within the health care team, it’s important that pharmacists play a central role in designing effective solutions that will benefit patients across the entire health care system”.
Medication errors are a global issue that cause the death or injury of millions of patients worldwide each year. The cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion (USD) annually or almost 1% of total global health expenditure. The issue has been identified by the World Health Organization as the focus of its most recent Global Patient Safety Challenge – a global initiative to reduce severe, avoidable medication-associated harm in all countries by 50% over the next 5 years.
CPhA looks forward to supporting Pharmapod to improve patient safety, both in Canada and across the globe, and provide pharmacists with the tools, resources and data they need to improve the health and safety of their patients.
About the Canadian Pharmacists Association
The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) is the uniting national voice of pharmacy and the pharmacist profession in Canada. As pharmacists undertake an enhanced role in the delivery of health care services, CPhA ensures that the profession is recognized as a national leader in health care, influencing the policies, programs, budgets and initiatives affecting the profession and the health of Canadians.
About Pharmapod
The Pharmapod platform is a pioneering cloud-based solution designed to drive standards of patient safety across the pharmacy profession world-wide. Pharmapod empowers healthcare professionals to identify risks in their practice, share their learnings and prevent recurrence of patient harm. Pharmapod’s professionally led team offers in-depth domain knowledge and expertise of the industry. The platform has succeeded in creating a hugely positive network of pharmacy teams united in shared goals - real peer-to-peer sharing of experience and delivering excellence in patient care. For more information, visit www.pharmapodhq.com.
For more information, please contact:
CPhA
Tyler Gogo
Strategic Communications Manager
Canadian Pharmacists Association
tgogo@pharmacists.ca
613-293-7223
Pharmapod
Leonora O’Brien, Founder & CEO
Pharmapod Ltd
leonora.obrien@pharmapodhq.com
+353 87 7730896