Innovation in treatments facilitates the adherence of patients with multiple sclerosis – Pharma Market

The Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy (SEFH) and the biotechnological company Biogen have recently organized a meeting on multiple sclerosis aimed at hospital pharmacists from all over Spain. Under the title “Effect Multiple 3.0. Multiplying the options of patients with MS. A new horizon for pharmaceutical care”, the event has served as a meeting point to address advances in this pathology, a space for training and exchange of experiences in care for patients with MS. Access to personalized medicine, simplification and improvement of care for patients with multiple sclerosis have served as the common thread for the development of the session. Throughout it, Dr. Icíar Martínez López, coordinator of the Genetics and Genomics Unit of the Balearic Islands (Genib), hospital pharmacist and member of Geafen-SEFH, referred to the “complexity” of the pathology and its impact “at a health, social and economic level”. A scenario that she, she assures, “determines the form of action and the involvement of the different types of professionals, from health professionals to social and government agents.” Access to personalized medicine, simplification and improvement of care for patients with multiple sclerosis have served as the common thread for the development of the session. In dealing with this pathology, Dr. Martínez López recalls that: “the Hospital Pharmacy carries out more than a thousand health actions that society should know about. One of them, the specialized care that is applied to the itinerary of the patient with MS”. Hence, she insists, the importance of “giving voice” to the specialty and “making visible” its role in the multidisciplinary approach to patients with MS. For his part, Ramón Morillo Verdugo, Doctor of Pharmacy at the Virgen de Valme University Hospital in Seville, made reference during the course of the event to the evolution of the specialty in recent years. In this sense, he acknowledges that they currently carry out their work with a “more clinical” vision and that the involvement and participation is greater “both in pharmacotherapy and in its management by patients”. Likewise, he highlighted the “importance” of the multidisciplinary approach and of being part of said teams. Innovation and adherence to treatment Within the framework of the conference, the evolution and paradigm shift that has occurred in multiple sclerosis in recent years thanks to innovation was also discussed. In the words of Dr. Ángel Arévalo, specialist pharmacist in the Pharmacy Service of the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona: “There have been significant advances in the therapeutic approach to multiple sclerosis, with a quantitative and qualitative increase in the therapeutic arsenal that we have to deal with the disease. “Important advances have been made in the therapeutic approach to multiple sclerosis, with a quantitative and qualitative increase in the therapeutic arsenal that we have to deal with the disease.” Dr. Arévalo also highlighted the importance of pharmacotherapeutic innovation due to its “involvement” in the development of new “effective and safe” drugs that increasingly take into account aspects of patient tolerability and comfort. In this sense, the specialist stressed that “innovation plays a very important role in patient adherence to treatment”. A scenario in which, for Arévalo, “the greater knowledge of the pathophysiology of the disease in the last decade and treating patients early with effective drugs” has had a lot to do with it.