Sunovion Pharmaceuticals and the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) have launched an initiative called “Delivery Makes a Difference,” which they say “seeks to understand patient and health care provider practices and to provide tools for matching patients with appropriate medications and delivery devices.”
According to the announcement, a steering committee composed of COPD experts began working in August 2016 to design a survey “to assess drug and device prescription habits and perception disparities between patients and health care providers.” Approximately 1,000 health care providers and patients will be surveyed, with publication of results expected at upcoming scientific meetings.
The initiative also plans to create educational materials for health care providers that they could use “to support their decisions regarding patients’ individual treatment paradigms.”
Steering committee Chair Nicola Hanania, Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, commented, “When first-line treatments fail to achieve their desired effect, health care providers often prescribe additional medications, failing to consider that the way the medicine has been delivered may be a significant issue. The Delivery Makes a Difference initiative hopes to provide important data to support the crucial step of choosing appropriate delivery devices for individual patients.”
Sunovion Executive VP and Chief Medical Officer Antony Loebel said, “Sunovion is proud to be working with CHEST to facilitate this important discussion with health care providers and patients about the role of delivery devices for COPD medications. We look forward to sharing the data from this survey with health care providers and to providing meaningful educational programs for patients.”
Read the Sunovion and CHEST press release.
