Siamah Azam – Zaman
Senior Primary Care Pharmacist
Medicines Optimisation Team in NHS South West London Integrated Care Board (SWL ICB)
Biography: Siamah has had versatile experience as a pharmacist in primary care, working in community pharmacies, community trusts, and general practices as an Independent Pharmacist Prescriber as well as her current role in the SWL ICB. She joined the SWL ICB in 2014 (previously Kingston CCG) and currently works as a Senior Primary Care Pharmacist, where many of her medicine optimisation workstreams span from GP practices, trusts and community pharmacies. Siamah is passionate about integrating community pharmacy services with other providers in SWL and has an interest in exploring digital solutions that will aid integration safely and increase efficiency.
South West London ICL Digital Pioneer Fellowship project summary: In April 2023, SWL ICB became responsible for community pharmacy services previously commissioned by NHS England. These pharmacy services’ communication (migration of patient data) between community pharmacies and providers is complex and challenging, due to a variety of different clinical/operational systems being used that aren’t interoperable. The aim is for Medicine Optimisation at SWL ICB to be better equipped in achieving digital innovation adoption for these pharmacy services, as effective data flow drives benefits (safety, outcomes and experience) to patients as well as users. This is in keeping with the ICB’s medicine safety agenda.
Estimated number of patients / staff impacted by the project: In SWL there are 182 GP practices and 9 NHS Trusts (acute, mental health and community), that serve a total population of 1.5 million. Patients seen by these providers can be referred to various pharmacy services, at any of the 295 SWL community pharmacies.
Goal(s) for time on the South West London ICL Digital Pioneer Fellowship: Siamah aims to incorporate the learnings from this programme to facilitate digital transformation for community pharmacy services, in order to improve patient care across providers in SWL.