Pharmaceutical care services – a current research perspective

Pharmaceutical care services have a long-standing history both in the community setting and in inpatient and long-term care. At its core, a pharmaceutical care service aims to improve medication safety by supporting either the patient or his carers as well as other health care professionals by offering drug information as well as detecting and solving drug-related problems. There are a myriad of different pharmaceutical care services throughout different health care systems and even if they seem to address the same issues the way how they are implemented varies. This makes it particularly difficult to compare results from different studies evaluating pharmaceutical care services. This talk will give an overview on (i) quality standards for studies evaluating pharmaceutical care services, (ii) current shortcomings of research on pharmaceutical care services and (iii) results from studies on pharmaceutical care services that are considered reproducible.