iPilot project flies high at HSJ Digital Awards | News

iPilot project flies high at HSJ Digital Awards

 The winning iPilot teamWe’re proud to announce that our iPilot project has been named as the winner of the Improving Mental Health through Digital at the HSJ Digital Awards 2024.

Funded by our charity, the iPILOT project, which has been done in collaboration between our pharmacy, West Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory (WMRGL), Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB) and Inagene Diagnostics set out to overcome barriers to implementation of pharmacogenomics within mental health and supporting patients to get the right medicine for them.

The team, made up of Alison Tennant, Chief Pharmacist; Anna Skowronska, R&D Scientist WMRGL; Jackie O’Brien, General Manager, Inagene Diagnostics; Jennie Bell, Laboratory Director, WMRGL; Jessica Woodley, Principal Clinical Scientist, WMRGL; and Stephen Abbs, Scientific Officer, Inagene Diagnostics, developed the pathways to test patients and inform prescribers of the results.

Pharmacogenomics analyses genes to detect how people metabolise different drugs, so it can give a recommendation to prescribers about the best drugs for an individual – a step towards personalised medicine. The results are presented to prescribers using a red, amber and green report indicating which are most effective, and which are least at a patient level. This is the first study to present pharmacogenomic results in this way.

 Alison receiving the award Alison said: “Every person is different in the way they metabolise medicines, so this allows us to track how people do this so that they can get medicine that is best for them, and with the right dosage. If you get a person on the right drug first time, it decreases the time for them to get a benefit and they’re more likely to stick with it.

“We have worked with the WMRGL and Inagene Diagnostics to find the best way to use the red, amber, green report generated to make it simpler for clinicians to process the information and explain it to patients. We worked with current patients in our Think4Brum and YPAG youth participation groups so that we knew this would help.

“We’re taken aback by winning the award. We absolutely believe in the value of pharmacogenomics and we had barriers to overcome, but with a strong dose of tenacity we have got this far. There are still a lot of other places where this could be valuable. We couldn’t have done it without the help of everyone in our teams, and without funding from our charity.”

Winners from a total of 23 categories were announced during a ceremony held at Manchester Central in June, hosted by comedian and writer Hal Cruttenden and where the achievements of 191 shortlisted finalists (from an impressive 343 entries) were celebrated. The winners were selected following a rigorous two-stage judging process by a group of 93 judges ahead of the awards ceremony.

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