Collaboration places patient safety at the heart of medicine procurement

HealthShare Victoria (HSV) and the Victorian Therapeutics Advisory Group (VicTAG) collaborated recently to develop a medicine evaluation tool designed to improve patient safety and reduce the clinical, operational and administrative load for both health services and HSV.

The project to create the tool came about in response to concerns about the clinical suitability of different medicines and the risk of medication errors when different products have similar packaging and labelling. These safety concerns have flow-on effects for health services and HSV, such as the need for costly workarounds.

“Not all TGA-registered medicines are suitable for every health service or every patient,” explains Jasmine Makin, HSV Head of Pharmaceutical Sourcing.

“Issues relating to labelling and packaging similarities or differences in inactive ingredients in a medicine can create risk and result in time-consuming and costly clinical, operational or administrative challenges – even putting health services at risk of not meeting national accreditation requirements,” Jasmine says.

“Most importantly, these issues can compromise patient safety.”

Similar packaging and unclear labelling can result in medication errors. “This can lead to clinicians selecting the wrong product,” says Jasmine.

Inactive ingredients – known as excipients – in a medicine can also cause safety issues, particularly in injectables.

“Medicines that are safe for one route of administration may be unsafe for another, due to differences in the excipients used in injectable formulations,” Jasmine says. 

Dealing with these concerning issues is a burden for health services and HSV, requiring time-consuming contract exemptions, creating challenges for supplier forecasting and causing costly delays to the commencement of statewide agreements.

In January 2024 HSV’s Pharmaceutical Procurement team joined forces with VicTAG – a trusted, independent advisory group of clinicians that supports the safe and effective use of medicines in Victorian hospitals – to develop a solution.

The project team developed the Medicines Safety Assessment Tool for Pharmaceutical Product Packaging to help healthcare professionals and procurement staff identify product packaging and labelling issues. This supports the selection of products that are clinically appropriate and safe for use in hospitals.

“The collaboration between VicTAG and HSV’s Pharmaceutical Procurement team to develop a comprehensive medication safety product assessment tool has been a significant step forward,” says Lisa Ciabotti, VicTAG Professional Manager.

“By combining VicTAG’s specialised expertise in medicines governance and safety with HSV’s experience in statewide pharmaceutical tenders, we’ve created a more robust and consistent process that will truly benefit real clinicians and real patients.”

HSV’s Sourcing Analytics team was integral to the project, designing the tool to be user-friendly for clinicians while ensuring it could also deliver actionable, data-driven insights for the HSV Procurement team.

In August 2025, the project team conducted a large-scale clinical evaluation involving 32 specialist pharmacists. Over four days, they reviewed the packaging and labelling of 2,247 products and assessed the excipients in 92 injectable products. Valuable information collected during the clinical evaluation is the source of data embedded in the Medicines Safety Assessment Tool. 

The tool will initially be used by HSV in an upcoming pharmaceutical tender, and the plan is to make it available for broader health service use in the future.

“By embedding this tool in our tender process, we are proactively mitigating risk. This leads to more resilient supply agreements, reduces the administrative burden of exemptions for health services and HSV, and ultimately delivers significant value beyond just cost savings,” notes Jasmine.

“Medicine use in health services will be safer and will lead to better outcomes for Victorian patients.”

Lisa agrees that the collaboration has succeeded in boosting patient safety, commenting: “This achievement ensures that medication safety is now at the foundation of every contract awarded.”

The HSV Pharmaceutical Procurement team and VicTAG will present on the tool at the Advanced Pharmacy Australia Medicine Management conference in November 2025.