By Kevin Mullan

Copyright derryjournal

Ten thousand people from Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, Sligo and Tayside in Scotland are set to benefit from the iMPROVE (Innovation in person-centred Medication Prescribing and Review for Optimal Value and Efficacy) project over the next four years. Professor David Gibson, Principal Investigator, said individual patients will be at the centre of how it operates. “This is a first in Ireland in GP practices. What we are aiming to do is really address need around some of the key long-term health conditions that people in the cross-border regions of Ireland really suffer in higher numbers than anywhere else in the UK or Ireland. “So those will be things like pain medications, heart disease, and depression,” Prof. Gibson said at the launch of the development at Magee on Wednesday. The goal is to make sure patients are on appropriate medications and to improve their treatment. “To do that we are going to apply what’s called the Patient-Centred Medication Review so we will look at all the medications that people are on,” said the Professor of Personalised Medicine at Ulster University. If patients are suffering from multiple conditions their treatment will be reviewed to examine whether certain drugs might cause issues. “We are going to take a personalised medicine view. That’s where we are going to tailor the treatments to somebody’s genetic make-up. We are going to look at people’s DNA in a way that will make the prescribing much more precise and get the right treatment at the right dose to the right patients,” he explains. Clinicians will harness this genetic information in order to improve prescribing. “We all have little individual changes in that, and that can determine whether you will respond well to a treatment or might have an issue where it will make you feel worse and there could be a risk where you would end up in hospital. “So in tailoring our treatments it means it reduces that risk of any adverse event and also means you are getting the best possible benefit from that treatment as well so it is that two-fold approach,” adds Prof. Gibson. All of this will be realised in collaboration with patients themselves and in partnership with multi-disciplinary teams in GP practices in Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, Sligo and Dundee. Prof. Gibson said the project targets an area of real need given the high numbers suffering from chronic conditions in the Derry area. “In the cross-border regions people are suffering from multiple long-term conditions in much-higher numbers than anywhere else on the island of island and in the UK. “So we are really addressing a core need here which really comes through in high levels of proscribing for those conditions. The burden on the health care system too is something we’d also hope to alleviate,” said Prof. Gibson, who indicated that a call-out for participants in iMPROVE is expected in the spring of 2026. Ulster University launches major cross-border health projects to support 19,000 people with €20m in EU PEACEPLUS funding