Mayberry Pharmacy’s MediPacks, which were launched at the National Assembly of Wales today (July 15), store medicines in easy-to-open pouches marked with the time, day and meal when they should be taken.
The refillable MediPack boxes, which are available free to patients with long-term conditions and those on three or more medicines, store a week’s worth of pouches in the order they should be opened. The pouches can be torn off the pack if the patient needs to leave home with their daily medicines.
The packs would be used by the seven-strong chain’s hub-and-spoke delivery service so they would be available free-of-charge to patients across Wales, regardless of whether they had a Mayberry Pharmacy branch in their area, managing director Paul Mayberry told C+D.
Recouping the millions of pounds lost every year through medicines waste in Wales was the “tip of the iceberg” and the packs could also help prevent “catastrophic events” caused by patients not taking their medicines correctly, such as strokes, Mr Mayberry said.Mr Mayberry was inspired to develop the packs after he visited a trade show in Europe, where he was shown how robots were routinely used to dispense prescriptions in boxes across Holland. The MediPacks showed that community pharmacy was on the “frontline” of innovative technology and Mayberry Pharmacy had worked with charity the Stroke Association to ensure the pouches were easier to open than standard tablet boxes, he said.
The pharmacy chain had invested a “six-figure sum” in the packs in an attempt to improve medicine adherence, he said.
