Courtesy of NICE
Updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on lung cancer diagnosis and management, published on 28 March 2019, includes two algorithms originally developed for peer reviewed journal Clinical Pharmacist
.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society member Rhiannon Walters-Davies, principal pharmacist at Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, and Anthony Pope, consultant in clinical oncology at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool, published ‘Lung cancer: advances in management and therapy’ as a peer reviewed CPD article on 8 June 2018.
Walters-Davies told The Pharmaceutical Journal that while drafting the article, “Dr Pope and I recognised the need for treatment algorithms to outline patient pathways, which are now dependent on multiple histologic and genetic testing”.
Walters-Davies was a member of the NICE Lung Cancer Guideline Review committee and found that NICE also saw the need for tools like these.
“The algorithms we had already developed were ideal to adapt for use within the updated guidelines,” she said. “In response to positive feedback on their usefulness, NICE has subsequently agreed to keep the algorithms as live documents within the guidance, with links back to the original article.
“This shows the impact that pharmacy expertise, and [Clinical Pharmacist], can have on developing national standards for patient care.”
