Sophie Willis

Investigations editor

Nearly 900 students dropped out of MPharm after first year in 2021/2022

Exclusive: General Pharmaceutical Council data suggest that 889 out of 4,505 students did not continue the MPharm degree after the first year.…

More than 10,000 whooping cough cases reported in first six months of 2024

Case numbers of whooping cough in 2024 so far have already exceeded the total number of cases reported in 2012, the last major outbreak of the disease.…

Weekly medicines data to be collected from hospital electronic prescribing systems

The electronic prescribing and medicine administration system data will be used for “planning, commissioning and research purposes”, NHS England has said.…

One-third of pharmacies forced to cut advanced services owing to financial pressures

The majority (81%) of pharmacy owners responding to Community Pharmacy England's poll also said they have had to stop offering extended opening hours.…

Community pharmacies report prescription delays caused by global IT outage

A defect found in a content update has impacted servers worldwide, including electronic patient record systems and software used in community pharmacies across the UK.…

Seven in ten pharmacists say medicines shortages have put patients at risk in past six months

Exclusive: Responding to a survey of 1,265 UK-based pharmacists working in all sectors, 861 answered ‘Yes’ when asked if medicines shortages have put patients at risk “in the past six months”.…

Clinical trial recruitment in England fell by almost 10% in 2023/2024

There were 18,140 people recruited to interventional industry clinical trials in 2023/2024, compared with 19,984 people in 2022/2023.…

NHS survey reveals fewer than 5% of patients have been referred to community pharmacy from general practice

The vast majority of respondents to the survey also described their experience of pharmacy services as ‘good’.…

NHS rolls out new multiple sclerosis injection that cuts treatment time by 90%

The NHS will be one of the first healthcare systems in the world to offer the new injection in the “coming weeks”.…

Novo Nordisk reprimanded for failing to disclose payments of almost £8m to healthcare sector

The decision to publicly reprimand Novo Nordisk was based on hundreds of payments made to more than 150 healthcare organisations, professionals, and members of the public, amounting to £7.8m.…