Medicines Management in the East Lancashire Health Economy

Information on this website has been provided by the East Lancashire Medicines Management Board which oversees Medicines Management issues across the East Lancashire Health Economy (population 522,000), which consists of;

• NHS Blackburn with Darwen

• NHS East Lancashire

• East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust   

The Medicines Management Board (MMB)  consists of physicians and representatives of other key decision-makers in the use of medicines in primary and secondary care. The remit of this board is to review selected pharmaceutical products to assess their clinical value, safety and suitability for use in the East Lancashire Health Economy, and to guide all prescribers in primary and secondary care in using them appropriately.

Typical drugs that are considered include newly licensed drugs or those that have a new indication and drugs used to treat conditions with which primary care prescribers may be less familiar. Unlicensed drugs and individual requests are also considered. Requests for drugs to be reviewed may be made by any health care professional in the East Lancashire Health Economy.

The recommendations of the MMB and the evidence considered in the evaluations are summarised in the New Drug Reviews. When use with a shared care agreement is recommended for a particular drug an effective Shared Care Agreement is provided for local use. These documents are available on the website under " New Drug Reviews ” and “ Shared Care Protocols ” respectively.  

Any decisions on drug use are also included into the Joint Medicines Formulary, which acts as a

reference to medicines approved for use in East Lancashire.  The Joint Medicines Formulary is formatted in the same style of the BNF, and provides all prescribers with a defined list of medicines that are available to prescribe, as well as the traffic light recommendation for each and any other recommendations for their use.  The Joint Medicines Formulary is available on the website under the “ Medicines Formulary ” heading above. Within East Lancashire a Joint Wound Care Formulary has also been developed, which forms the basis for the prescribing of cost effective and evaluated wound care products, as well as giving guidance on selection of dressing, specialist products, and available sizes.  It is available on the website under the " Wound Care Formulary " heading above.

The MMB also provides supporting information on some general prescribing issues (e.g. product withdrawals) as well as ratifying prescribing and clinical guidelines, treatment protocols and integrated care pathways for use across East Lancashire, all of which can be found above under  "Guidelines ".

Latest decisions of the MMB are listed on the MMB website update email that is sent out each month.  Health care professionals in East Lancashire can also register to receive this and other news by clicking on the link at the top of the page.  Planned activities and other relevant news items can be found in our monthly newsletter  INTERFACE that is distributed to all healthcare professionals across East Lancashire and is also available online under the heading “ Newsletters & Minutes ” on the left hand navigation panel.

For Freedom of Information Requests, please contact:

foi@bwd.nhs.uk – NHS Blackburn with Darwen

foi@eastlancspct.nhs.uk – NHS East Lancashire