Federal Health Minister, The Hon. Sussan Ley MP has announced that the government’s $50 million Pharmacy Trial program will commence in November 2016.

The in-pharmacy Diabetes Screening Services trial will randomly-select 360 metro, regional, and rural pharmacies across Australia as participants. The program requests patients to use a validated AUSDRICK questionnaire to test their risk of diabetes as well as test whether the disease is present.

“Patients will be referred to their general practitioner appropriately based on outcomes from the questionnaire,” said Ms Ley.

Ms Ley said the program has been designed to test a variety of ways to detect diabetes in pharmacy. The test and program will ultimately promote pharmacy care among patients.

“The Pharmacy Trial Program represents a transformative opportunity for the pharmacy profession enabling it to continue to build upon its existing dispensing role by trialling new approaches to providing primacy care services,” Ms Ley said.

The trial will be conducted by The University of Sydney and Deakin University, in partnership with the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.

The Pharmacy Guild welcomed the partnership by inviting more than 600 randomly-selected community pharmacies Australia-wide to register their interest in participating in Australia’s first screening trial. Following registration of interest, a target 363 pharmacies across Australia will commence the trial next month.

National President of the Pharmacy Guild, George Tambassis welcomed the initiative citing;“Community pharmacies are ideally placed for identifying individuals at high-risk of type 2 diabetes and screening them using recognised screening and risk assessment techniques.”.

With this new test in place, Australians will be able to easily determine whether they are at risk of diabetes by completing a short questionnaire. The convenience of performing this questionnaire at their local pharmacist – the most accessible of all health professionals in Australia – should hopefully enhance public education and diagnosis.

To learn more, head to https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/