Quality assurance

Your safety and well-being is our greatest concern, which is why we apply our quality control criteria to everything we do. Specialist Pharmacy staff are trained to the highest standards, where our management team and pharmacists are selected on the basis of experience, skill and an understanding of patient-centric delivery and technicians have attained a minimum level of NVQ2. We are fully compliant with, and exceed, the health and safety standards set by our regulator the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).

We employ a systematic quality management framework that strives to ensure quality conformance and improvement. These measures are outlined below:

• Each and every prescription undergoes a thorough, initial clinical screening by our head pharmacist.

• At every stage of the process – from compounding to labelling through to shipment to your patient – a separate check is made and signed off by a pharmacist.

• Our laboratory is equipped with leading-edge, computerised technology, enabling accuracy when compounding the ingredients of each prescription.

• Each prescription is entered electronically and assigned a unique barcode. We have detailed records of every preparation we undertake and can trace any prescription back to the original formula and source of ingredients.

• We conform to the highest standards of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and we demand the same of our suppliers. We only work with pharmaceutical raw material suppliers operating in countries whose GMP standards are recognised by the EU, using GMP-appropriate manufacturing equipment and software. We have certificates of analysis for each ingredient used, assuring the pharmaceutical grade.

• All ingredients used in Specialist Pharmacy compounded products are sourced from reputable suppliers and approved by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK. For patients that require support with specific allergies we can also make medications using alternative ingredients.

Our prescriber’s trust us to make high-quality medicines for their patients. The integrity of our track record speaks for the quality of our products.

About Compounding
Compounding pharmacists use a combination of active pharmaceutical ingredients, in specific measured dosages, to make customised medicinal treatments based on an individual patient’s needs.

Until the mid-20th century, most pharmacies in the UK were compounding pharmacies. With the advent of mass produced drugs and the creation of the NHS in the last century, compounding pharmacies became less commonplace.

In recent years, however, many medical practitioners have recognised the benefits of “treating the patient, not the condition”. And, as compounding pharmacies have enabled doctors to write bespoke prescriptions that meet the needs of individual patients, their use has increased.