Mapping Evidence of Pharmacy Services for COVID-19 in China

Zhan-Miao Yi; Yang Hu; Guan-Ru Wang; Rong-Sheng Zhao

doi:10.3389/fphar.2020.555753

Mapping Evidence of Pharmacy Services for COVID-19 in China

Front Pharmacol. 2020 Oct 2:11:555753. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.555753. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Zhan-Miao Yi^{1

2

3}, Yang Hu^{1

2

3

4}, Guan-Ru Wang^{1

2

3

4}, Rong-Sheng Zhao^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmacy, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China.
² Institute for Drug Evaluation, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
³ Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology Center, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁴ Department of Pharmacy Administration and Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Objective: To explore the role of pharmacists and innovation of pharmacy interventions for COVID-19 patients in China.

Methods: We comprehensively searched PubMed and Chinese databases Sinomed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure to identify articles reporting pharmacist interventions and pharmacy services for COVID-19 patients using a predefined search strategy. The search period was from inception to April 7^th 2020. We also manually searched the reference list of included articles and websites of important journals with special issues for COVID-19.

Results: A total of 156 articles were identified by applying the search criteria. After screening, 91 articles, with the majority are literature reviews (n = 77, 84.62%) published in Chinese (n = 83, 91.2%), were included. Pharmacist interventions for COVID-19 patients most commonly related to guidelines or consensus development for the treatment of disease and practice procedure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (n = 10, 10.98%), the supply of medicines to treat patients with severe respiratory or systematic symptoms related to COVID-19 (n = 10, 10.98%), formulating infections prevention and control strategies related to COVID-19 for pharmaceutical personnel/pharmacy staff (n = 14, 15.39%), new way of delivery pharmacy services and the implementation of new pharmacy services for COVID-19 outbreak (n = 14, 15.39%), routine pharmacy services under the restrict limit of COVID-19 outbreak (n = 39, 42.86%), and case series analysis of treatment regimens using existing, routinely collected data (n = 4, 4.40%).

Conclusion: Pharmacy services have a role in the COVID-19 pandemic control, and there were many rapid changes in response to the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; emergency supply; guideline development; pharmacy service; service model innovation; treatment regimens.