Community Pharmacist
Research
CORE has established the Community Pharmacist Research Network (CPRN) to capitalize on the availability and accessibility of pharmacists in urban and rural communities throughout the province. The Director of the CPRN is Dr. Judith Soon. In the past year, the number of research-oriented community pharmacies in the CPRN has expanded from 150 to 187, an increase of 25%. The CPRN enables the collection of real-time, patient-specific data under conditions of routine clinical care, and can be utilized in settings of randomized clinical trials as well as prospective and longitudinal studies. Post-marketing data on tolerability, adherence and effectiveness of medications can be efficiently obtained and the field study data linked to medical office records and the BC Linked Health Databases. With funding from peer-reviewed sources, the CPRN has been utilized in the past year for multi-university, multidisciplinary studies for chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis, diabetes and asthma. These collaborative projects often involve health policy decision-makers, academics, advocacy groups, as well as community health care professionals. Some of these studies are described in our annual report.
