RESEARCHERS AT Dundee University have been given the go-ahead for a new project to improve prescribing by family doctors.

The five-year £870,000 study, which will be ground-breaking in its use of clinical data gathered electronically by GPs, is being funded by Scotland’s Chief Scientist Office, set up to secure lasting improvements to people’s health and improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of the country’s health services and healthcare.

The lead researcher is GP Bruce Guthrie, professor of primary care medicine at Dundee University and an honorary consultant with NHS Fife. He said, “The project is a collaboration between Dundee University, NHS Tayside and NHS Fife.

“It’s an exciting new study; prescribing is a key area of medical practice. If you get it right it does a lot of good; if you get it wrong there can be a high cost for both patients and the NHS.”

Prescriptions cost the NHS in Scotland about £1bn per year but the research is about more than cutting costs, stressed the professor, who maintains a GP practice.

“The way I prefer to look at prescribing is: ‘am I giving the right drug to the right person at the right time?’ It is about quality and safety rather than cost.”

On over-prescribing, he added, “I think there may be, but we don’t know enough about appropriateness and safety.

“The example I would use is that of cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins). Statins are probably both under-prescribed to those of high risk of heart attack and over-prescribed in some people of low risk of heart disease. If you improve that situation to ensure everyone at high risk has been offered them and you don’t prescribe to people who don’t need them, it might cost more, or less or have a neutral effect.”