2015 Innovation Fund winners

NOVEMBER 2015 – Researchers from the University of Alberta and the University of Waterloo are the latest recipients of three grants totalling more than $88,000 from the Innovation Fund of the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy.  

“CFP is very excited to help fund these research initiatives because we think they have the potential to have broad application across the profession of pharmacy,” says Dayle Acorn, Executive Director for the Foundation.

The University of Alberta’s Christine Hughes (shown in featured image – first one from the left) and her research team will examine how pharmacists provide patient care services using the pharmacy services framework in Alberta. Working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association, researchers will explore relationships between real-life community pharmacy practice and the development and implementation of care plans. The hope is that study findings will inform policy makers interested in reimbursement frameworks as well as professional organizations looking for ways to support pharmacists’ practice change.

Tejal Patel, Assistant Professor at U of W, is investigating the use of pharmacist interventions to reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly in the primary care setting. With pharmacists being increasingly integrated into primary care practices, this study will highlight pharmacists’ potential to improve care and outcomes among the most vulnerable of in our population. 

Sherilyn Houle, an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo, is leading a team of researchers to investigate the clinical effectiveness and patient satisfaction of a pharmacist-managed travel medicine clinic under a pharmacist’s expanded scope of practice. While previous research has looked at patient satisfaction, clinical appropriateness and acceptance of recommendations provided with pharmacist travel consultations, none of these were within the context of the pharmacist being an independent prescriber of these therapies.