AYPG Leadership Summit | Pharmaceutical Society of Singapore

What's Happening

E-Bulletin

After a relaxing first day snapping numerous photos among the stony walls of the two cultural relics, the delegation was up bright and early the following morning to embark on a scholastic visit to Yogyakarta’s oldest hospital. Standing at a respectable 120 years old, Bethesda Hospital, Yogyakarta is one of the biggest private hospitals in the city. As with most hospitals today in an era of ever rising healthcare demands, Bethesda has had to innovate and adopt technology to boost its efficiency and productivity in order to cope. It now boasts an automated packing machine for dispensing pre-packed boxes of medications and is in the process of migrating to an electronic medical records system.

The pharmacy department has also come up with a set of priorities for medication reconciliation as well as medication counselling to patients in order to cope with the high patient load. The scholastic visit participants were also given an opportunity to visit the compounding laboratory of the hospital, which was reportedly modelled after the compounding laboratory in our very own Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore!

Asian Young Pharmacist Groups (AYPG) Annual Meeting

Following the scholastic visit, it was straight back to the hotel for the AYPG annual meeting where representatives from the various Young Pharmacist Groups (YPG) from member organisations presented their reports on notable activities and achievements for the preceding year as well as upcoming initiatives. The various YPGs also touched on the challenges faced given the changing landscape of pharmacy in the region and actively discussed on possible way to tackle them. Notable events and motions passed in the course of the meeting include the approval of Thai YPG to become a member organisation of AYPG as well as the possible expansion of research by Dr. Mai Chun Wai of the MPS Young Pharmacist Chapter on dispensing and prescribing separation to include other AYPG member countries. During the meeting, projects to spark greater collaboration among AYPG member countries were also touched upon e.g. greater use of social media platforms such as the up and coming AYPG facebook page and website as well as PharmTravel where member AYPGs could potentially host visiting pharmacists from other countries and provide exposure to various pharmacy settings within the country.

AYPG Leadership Summit

The Leadership Summit was an eye opener and provided many insights to ongoing projects worldwide to address infectious diseases and health issues on a regional and global platform. Christopher Raymond from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Tuberculosis Private Sector (TBPS) shared on the initiatives to engage general practitioners in the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) to increase case detection and reporting, enhance access to state-of-the-art diagnostics and medicines, and promote public-sector stewardship for a sustained commitment to a TB-free Indonesia. Roderick Salenga from World Health Organization gave a broad perspective and discussion on global health issues and how pharmacists may contribute in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In line with the theme of ‘Empowering Pharmacists in the Era of Change’, we have the honour of a panel discussion with 4 established leaders who displayed exemplary leadership to share with us their journeys and how young pharmacists can take the first step to make changes and adapt to changes. Local leaders from Indonesia, Malaysia as well as Philippines also shared with us their journey to make a positive impact to local communities, such as making medicines and healthcare accessible to rural villages as well as the intellectually impaired.

Day 2 started off with distinguished speakers sharing about how we can better tackle evolving world health issues. USAID had presented about how we can recognise and deal with antibiotic resistance, while Bio Farma had enlightened us about the importance of preventive health, focussing on the role of vaccination.

Following this was an insight into healthcare disruption in this modern age. Halodoc and SwipeRx are one of the few latest innovations which involve the use of the mobile app platform. Halodoc is an Indonesia-based digital app designed to connect patients with doctors, pharmacists and medical laboratory services. Users can initiate chats, videos or voice calls with medical professionals, purchase medications and have them delivered. On the other hand, SwipeRx engages pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies so as to improve health outcomes, by linking up a huge network of pharmacies and pharmacy professionals across Southeast Asia.

The second half of the day featured a workshop on effective communication conducted by MIMS. Not only were tips on improving patient encounters shared, there was also a group activity which involved role playing for various scenarios commonly encountered at the pharmacy. Our group had worked with some of our counterparts from Cambodia and we were invited to present our role play in front of the huge audience!

The day ended with an award presentation for poster and oral presentations.

Cultural Show

The cultural show is the most anticipated moment in the summit as we are able to appreciate the tradition and diverse cultural backgrounds of each nation. We collaborated with delegates from Malaysia and Taiwan to present a medley consisting of songs originated by artists from these 3 countries, including our local stars Lin Jun Jie and Stephanie Sun. Delegates from Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia as well as AYPG Council members also performed and ended the night with a bang! It was a perfect representation of the key to harmony in diversity!