A European Competence Framework for Industrial Pharmacy Practice in Biotechnology.

Jeffrey Atkinson,Brian Gennery,Kristien De Paepe,Giuseppe Ronsisvalle,Vivien Moffat,Vitor Sousa,Keith Wilson,Pat Crowley,Andries Koster,Chris Van Schravendijk,Gunther Pauwels,Luigi Martini,Jane Nicholson

doi:10.3390/pharmacy3030101

Abstract

The PHAR-IN (“Competences for industrial pharmacy practice in biotechnology”) looked at whether there is a difference in how industrial employees and academics rank competences for practice in the biotechnological industry. A small expert panel consisting of the authors of this paper produced a biotechnology competence framework by drawing up an initial list of competences then ranking them in importance using a three-stage Delphi process. The framework was next evaluated and validated by a large expert panel of academics (n = 37) and industrial employees (n = 154). Results show that priorities for industrial employees and academics were similar. The competences for biotechnology practice that received the highest scores were mainly in: “Research and Development”,‘“Upstream” and “Downstream” Processing’, “Product development and formulation”,“Aseptic processing”, “Analytical methodology”, “Product stability”, and “Regulation”. The main area of disagreement was in the category “Ethics and drug safety” where academics ranked competences higher than did industrial employees.

Highlights

The PHAR-IN (“Competences for industrial pharmacy practice in biotechnology”) [1] consortium consists of professional organisations representing industrial employees, viz, the European IndustrialPharmacists’ Group (EIPG) [2], and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, (EFPIA) [3], together with pharmacy academics from the European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP) [4]
Of European pharmacists (6% of the total workforce) work in industry [6], this is similar to the world-wide figure of 10% given by the International Pharmaceutical Federation [7]
The question arises, as to how to adapt pharmacy education to this switch towards biotechnology; this is under discussion in Europe [10], Australia [11]

Summary

Introduction

The PHAR-IN (“Competences for industrial pharmacy practice in biotechnology”) [1] consortium consists of professional organisations representing industrial employees, viz, the European IndustrialPharmacists’ Group (EIPG) [2], and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, (EFPIA) [3], together with pharmacy academics from the European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP) [4]. The PHAR-IN (“Competences for industrial pharmacy practice in biotechnology”) [1] consortium consists of professional organisations representing industrial employees, viz, the European Industrial. The PHAR-IN consortium looked at whether there is a difference in how industrial employees and academics rank competences for practice in the biotechnological industry. The framework was evaluated and validated by a large expert panel of academics drawn from EAFP (n = 37), and by industrial employees that were members of EIPG, EFPIA and European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS [5]) (n = 154). The question arises, as to how to adapt pharmacy education to this switch towards biotechnology; this is under discussion in Europe [10], Australia [11]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion