On December 1st, the final conference of HAPPY PATIENT took place in Barcelona, bringing together nearly 50 people, including project partners and professionals from the academic, health, and research fields. It served as a gathering point to address the public health issue of antibiotic resistance on a European and global scale.
During this event, the results achieved by HAPPY PATIENT after three years of coordinated research led by the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) and IDIAP Jordi Gol were presented, with the participation of a team of professionals from different regions of Europe.
Encouraging results
Among the project’s findings, attendees highlighted milestones in the pharmacy setting, a setting where the implementation of HAPPY PATIENT significantly improved the correct dispensing of antibiotics. Maarten Lambert, from the University of Groningen, explained that safety checks, including the explanation of interactions, contraindications, and allergies related to dispensed antibiotics, increased by 18% after the intervention.
Another significant aspect of the final conference was the presentation of the project’s economic results. Laura Vallejo, from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, presented information on the upscaling, implementation, and sustainability of HAPPY PATIENT. She detailed that if the intervention were implemented in all European Union countries, it could result in annual savings of 114 million euros in the health budgets of this area.
Additionally, Jette Nygaard, from Region Hovedstaden, during the presentations by each of the partners, emphasized that results in nursing homes settings encouraged the team to increase efforts towards their new project, IMAGINE, developing a more complex and adapted intervention exclusively for this complex field.
Need of more measures to combat AMR
«Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is much more important than we think; we have to protect individuals; otherwise, future generations will face a significant problem,» said Carl Llor, coordinator of HAPPY PATIENT, in the closing speech of the final conference. Llor added that “embracing the «One Health» concept is crucial to addressing issues of the magnitude of antibiotic resistance”.
During the final conference, there was also time for debate and reflection. Some attendees emphasized the importance of developing projects like HAPPY PATIENT and undertaking urgent actions to reduce and halt antibiotic resistance.
