Building an effective medicines optimisation model: a health system approach

This commentary narrates on the building of an effective and innovative medicines optimisation model. It discusses the essential features, emphasizes the need, and considers the strong health and pharmacy system as a prerequisite before such a model could be built. The paper argues that it is important to strengthen the health system before the elements of pharmaceutical care and medicine optimisation can take shape. It discusses the discourse and interplay between medicine use and medicine access research. The other important elements to include are the "selection of medicines by health technology assessment", "economic evaluation of pharmacy services", "pharmacists' remuneration by the government", "Health system strengthening status", "quality use of generic medicines programmes", "rationale prescribing", "access to medicines and medicines pricing", "medicines advertising" and the "state of pharmacy practice and the development of the pharmacist's role". A set of different high-, middle- and low-income countries are used to provide examples of the status of the health system and the subsequent development of pharmacy practice and medicines optimisation. The countries include the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Türkiye, Malaysia, India, and Pakistan.