Hospital pharmacy, comparing the experiences of excellence in the third edition of Masterpharm

Francesco Cattel: "Three days of discussions on the current challenges of the profession"

TURIN – The Hospital Pharmacist has a central role in the increasingly rapid development of health services, contributing to regional health organizations in very vast areas, which mainly concern the management of drugs and devices, but also influencing clinical trials and Health Technology Assessment, on logistics and robotics applications.

Inevitably, regional settings and experiences show a scenario of different approaches and solutions on all these issues, therefore requiring a place of possible dialogue and synthesis to try to find points of contact in the evident complexity.

Precisely to encourage a comparison between the excellent experiences of hospital pharmacies in the various Italian regions, the first module of MASTERPHARM 2024 opens next week in Turin (28-31 May, DoubleTree Hilton Lingotto, Turin) , a training course now in its third edition and coordinated by Francesco Cattel (Director of the complex hospital pharmacy structure of the University Hospital Città della Salute e della Scienza of Turin).

“We are very proud to arrive at this new edition of Masterpharm – declares Francesco Cattel – The path we are following over the years confirms not only the success of the format, but also the recognition of the educational value of the initiative. One of the points the strength that we brought home from previous editions was the ability to build a widespread network of pharmacists from all over the country. These professionals confirmed the successful functioning of our format: unlike a traditional master’s degree, Masterpharm in fact develops at key moments distributed throughout the year. This approach allowed participants to present their own experiences and, consequently, to assimilate those of other colleagues, creating an exponential cascade effect , the visibility of the Italian hospital pharmacy is also growing”.

But what are the characteristics on which this year’s event program was built? In 2024 the program is developed on two main modules: one – national and regional – which starts tomorrow and one scheduled for November, with an international dialogue meeting setting. The start is entrusted to a three-day discussion between Regions: why this desire to bring out the experiences of the territories in the management of drugs and devices?

“We wanted to give extreme value to the concept of benchmarking – replies Cattel – It is often said that in Italy we have twenty-one Regions and as many different health services. And therefore in our program we have foreseen a real professional tour of Italy, starting from three regions in the North (Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy), three in the Center (Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo) and two in the South (Campania and Sicily). In the first two days, each region will have some microsessions available in which to present peculiarities and clinical and pharmaceutical excellence.

Furthermore, there will be a moment of discussion with prominent economists at a national level who will comment on the topic of innovation sustainability. The idea for Masterpharm 2025 is to involve precisely those regions not included in this year’s agenda, thus ensuring a continuous cycle of comparison and improvement”.

The Masterpharm 2024 program therefore sees an opening tomorrow with institutional greetings from the Piedmont Region and the Regional Health Directorate, as well as from the University of Turin and the SIFO and SIFACT Scientific Societies, followed by masterly readings by Nello Martini (Where therapeutic innovation is taking us) and Giovanna Scroccaro (Drug governance between AIFA and the Region).

The two central days of the event (29 and 30 May) will offer an intense comparison between the experiences of eight regions on central professional topics (innovation and automation, HTA and gene therapies, molecular tumor boards and professional alliances, antimicrobial stewardship and chronicity) while the final day (31 May) will be occupied by a broad discussion on Governance and pharmaceutical organization which will see in-depth analysis of the pharmacy as a hub for prescriptive appropriateness, hospital-territory management, automation in the pharmaceutical setting, the new Italian Device Vigilance Network, outsourcing of pharmaceutical warehouses, centralized pharmaceutical logistics.

Is it possible to enclose all the topics addressed in the program in a single ‘keyword’ which will be the common thread of Masterpharm24? “Of course – replies the Course Director – We can condense all the themes of the program into a single guiding value: sustainable innovation. This concept embodies not only the integration of new technologies and advanced therapies, but also the need for efficient governance and a sustainable approach that takes into account the ethical, economic and health implications of modern pharmaceutical practices”.

But who are the participants of the Turin event? The Masterpham audience is usually full of young hospital pharmacists (last year there were over 120), but the three-day event no longer seems to be aimed ‘only’ at them… Francesco Cattel confirms this: “It is important to note how in in recent years we have witnessed a substantial evolution in the composition of the audience.

If initially Masterpharm was proposed as an opportunity for the cultural integration and training of young hospital pharmacists, to date it has also become an important opportunity for the directors of the pharmacies of healthcare companies and pharmaceutical services. The event has therefore broadened its vision: it is no longer just a training event, but with a view to comparing best practices, Masterpharm becomes a collective moment in which to draw ideas to improve the daily practice of hospital pharmacies. This transformation – concludes the Director of the event – has led us to redefine Masterpharm as the ‘hospital pharmacy quadrangle’, assimilating it to the concept of the oncology quadrangle or even the fashion quadrangle. In this case, the four corners of our proposal are: hospital pharmacy, innovation, sustainability and governance. This holistic and interdisciplinary approach reflects the complexity and breadth of the challenges and opportunities facing the hospital pharmacy sector today.”