It has been estimated £300 million of NHS prescribed medicines are wasted each year. The issue pharmacy teams have is not only the difficulty in measuring and quantifying types and volumes of waste, it is how ‘and if’ they can provide better system visibility and operating enhancements to reduce and avoid products like pharmacy fluids expiring, and the confidence in knowing that patient safety will not be compromised with an ‘out of date’ fluid bag sat on their hospital storeroom shelf.

The North West London & Kingston (NWLK) collaboration recognised the importance of sustaining a long term cultural change towards medicinal waste and embedding new systems and solutions that will become the normal and everyday part of the culture within the NHS.

18 months down the line and 14 hospital implementations later, we are immensely proud of the work and energy Eleanor and the NWLK teams have placed on the new service and the introduction of our Pharmacy Fluids Inventory management software. Not only have these daily controls helped support the visibility of their inventory, by closely monitoring product expiration, but obsolescence has also dipped to levels never seen before, waste is at a bare minimum, the risk to patients has been reduced and valuable cash has been retained within the NHS.