Entitled ‘Sharing experiences with depot buprenorphine in the EU and Australia’, the symposium explored the use of depot formulations within the context of opioid dependence. Delegates heard from internationally renowned speakers about long-acting formulations, including potential benefits, their experiences of using them with their patients, and how to introduce them into clinical practice. Attendees were highly engaged and sparked interesting discussions with speakers during the Q&A portion of the symposium.

Overall, feedback from the event was extremely positive, with most delegates scoring all sessions very highly and expressing that it had changed their views about opioid dependence treatment.

The Academy, which was launched in 2016, is run in collaboration with the Primary Care Respiratory Society and provides expert-guided learning and peer-to-peer exchange through both live events and digital resources.

It has expanded over time to include three parallel platforms, each partnered with different Cogora media brands:

• Clinical Platform: partnered with Pulse and Nursing in Practice, and suitable for a wide range of primary care clinicians including GPs, practice nurses, clinical pharmacists and more
• Commissioning Platform: partnered with Healthcare Leader and Management in Practice, and targeted at individuals involved in the design and delivery of respiratory services
• Community Pharmacy Platform (new for 2019): partnered with The Pharmacist, and tailored specifically to the needs of independent community pharmacists

Following a hugely successful 2018, we are looking forward to an even bigger and better 2019.

Working with Versus Arthritis, the team delivered an RCGP-accredited programme that educated GPs and other frontline healthcare professionals around the UK in terms of best-practice MSK diagnosis and management.

Designed to each last a full day, the workshops were intimate and highly interactive, encouraging hands-on learning. Delegates were able to learn about useful hints and tips, practice examination skills and receive instant feedback from trainers along the way. Supplemented by additional educational resources, participants also had the chance to discuss treatment and management plans and share experiences with their peers.

The series has proven to be extremely successful, receiving high scores in post-event evaluations for all aspects of the workshops. Relevance to clinical practice, hands-on learning, examination and small group teaching have been identified by delegates as particular highlights.

“This was the best training I have ever been on… It was fantastic to have GPs teach us as they really get the context in which we work and our needs. I feel empowered, upskilled and enabled. Thank you so much!” – Dr Jenny Napier, GP, London workshop delegate (24th May 2018)

With four internationally known faculty members who presented on subjects ranging from ‘Rheumatological comorbidities associated with gout and hyperuricemia’ to ‘Treat to target and monitor regularly’.

The key focus of the meeting, however, was the discussion sessions, based around real case studies submitted by the delegates. These breakout sessions gave the group an opportunity to review and discuss the challenging clinical cases submitted by their peers, and the management strategies that could have been used.

Finally, the meeting closed with ‘consensus discussion’ plenary session. Moderated by the faculty, the whole audience were able to give their views on 5 key topics in gout.

Set up in 2016, the Academy has been developed in partnership with the Primary Care Respiratory Society UK, is endorsed by the British Lung Foundation and is partnered with Cogora’s market-leading media brands Pulse, Nursing in Practice, Management in Practice and Healthcare Leader. It consists of two Platforms – Clinical (for GPs, nurses and practice pharmacists) and Commissioning (for experts involved in improving population-level respiratory health outcomes).

The Clinical Platform has been bringing best-practice respiratory education to UK primary care professionals since 2016, comprising live Roadshow events, Digital Resources, CPD Modules, a monthly Journal Club and a monthly Newsletter. This year, it delivered an expert-led programme of 20 live events covering practical essentials in respiratory care, guidance updates and interactive workshops, where expertise from the audiences was aired and shared. The view of just one of the attendees? “This was probably one of the best study days I have ever been to because it has benefited my practice.”

The Commissioning Platform, launched in 2017, includes live workshops, Digital Resources and a monthly Newsletter. This year’s live workshops attracted an audience including respiratory commissioning leads, long-term commissioning leads, service transformation leads and medicines optimisation leads – representing 54 Clinical Commissioning Groups across England. Led by a team of enthusiastic commissioning professionals, the delegates had the time and space to focus on what was important to them and their local issues. As one of our delegates explained, “the most effective items came up through how the session was managed, by having an open forum approach and discussing ideas and experiences from the presenters as well as the other local commissioners and clinicians in the room”.

Planning for the 2019 Primary Care Respiratory Academy is currently underway.

The two-day event features presentations, company-sponsored satellite symposia and an exhibition area in which to meet with pharmaceutical and medical device company representatives.

This is a community that is of longstanding and considerable importance to Cogora, feeding in to both Hospital Pharmacy Europe and the Agency. This year, the 23rd Congress is being held in Gottenburg, Sweden, and Cogora staff will again be present in force. 

In addition to covering the congress in Hospital Pharmacy Europe and holding meetings with various of our clients, we will be Chairing one of the industry-sponsored satellite symposia and participating in focus groups. 

Today, we now know that the unsuspecting 90% of our brain formerly termed as ‘just glue’ is in fact, active, adaptable and very, very important.

The revelation of the various different roles played by glial cells, which include much more than being sticky, support cells, has revolutionised the way we think about the brain and has huge implications for future research and developments.

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ADHD, autism, depression and schizophrenia are all ‘A-lister’ disorders that capture much of the public’s attention and have had their fair few sensationalist headlines. However, they are not the only areas where further neuroscientific developments could have a real, tangible impact on patients.

It is worth remembering that it is in fact headache disorders that are the most common neurological disorders worldwide. Headache disorders are ranked by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 most disabling conditions and estimates a €43 billion ‘headache’ burden in Europe alone.

So while it might not make your front-page news, all great journeys start with a single step and as our understanding of all things neuroscience flourishes, perhaps a headache really will be just as mundane as its public media presence would have you believe.

The project kicked off back in 2015 and since then we have welcomed a highly-engaged audience of almost 1,300 GPs and nurses across 20 live events across the UK and have launched a thriving digital hub with over 900 registered users.

The biggest challenge has not been trying to keep an audience of over 2,000 healthcare professionals engaged, it has been working with a charity itself.

There is an enormous array of benefits in partnering with a charity, most importantly in cementing the credibility and integrity of the programme. We are hugely lucky to be working with PCRS-UK and to be guided by very knowledgeable and esteemed respiratory experts. However, in doing so, it can be challenging to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

Working with an incredibly passionate, but opinionated, PCRS-UK Editorial board, in addition to a large speaker faculty, can be a juggling act both from a logistical and content development perspective; it has certainly presented its fair share of challenging situations over the course of the project! Ultimately though the breadth of knowledge and experience brought together by PCRS-UK has made the outcomes all the better for all involved and we have come a long way since the project began.

Cogora: The Agency and our colleagues at PCRS-UK are very much looking forward to the 2017 programme and delighted that we are launching an additional forum for collaboration and networking across the commissioning community – the Respiratory Commissioning Platform. Development of both programmes is now fully under way; both promise to be hugely interactive and dynamic, with the ultimate aim of improving respiratory care through learning and sharing of best practice.

Recently Pharmacom Media staged the European Conference on OAD (ECOAD), bringing together pain and addiction specialists from across France, Germany and the UK. The conference had two main objectives: to finalise the development of an educational toolkit that can be used to further the education of healthcare professionals on Opioid Analgesic (painkiller) Dependence (OAD), and to discuss recent survey data collected from HCPs across Europe who manage patients with OAD.

The toolkit has been designed to allow the attendees to roll out small interdisciplinary meetings in their local areas, and includes both educational materials and engaging group discussion activities. Entitled Interdisciplinary workshops on Recovery in OAD (‘In-ROADs’), it is currently being finalised and will soon be made available to the attendees.

Results from a recent survey of GPs, pain specialists and addiction specialists from across the three countries were presented and discussed at length. The survey aims to help HCPs better understand the current treatment landscape of OAD, and identify areas where future improvements in clinical practice could be made.

Owing to the high level of interest shown by the attendees in these new results, the ECOAD co-chairs are currently looking at collecting further responses by disseminating the survey through their local medical societies. Once the final data has been collected, the co-chairs will develop a publication describing the current clinical pathway for managing OAD and highlighting national differences in the care of patients with this condition.

Delegate feedback:

• 100% found the organisation of the meeting to be good or excellent
• 70% were satisfied or very satisfied with the organisation of the meeting, quality of the slides, and the usefulness of the breakout sessions
• 60% were satisfied with the educational value and relevance of the content to delivering meeting objectives

The key change which delegates wished to see following the meeting was increased awareness of the problem of OAD and improved communication between addiction & pain specialists and GPs.

The meeting chairs (pictured) were Dr David Bremner (UK), Prof Maurice Dematteis (FR) and Prof Thomas Tölle (GE).