Adam Livori, Team Leader Pharmacist of the Medical Specialties Pharmacy Team and Outpatient Pharmacist clinics in Ballarat, will also be flown to the University College London for a two-week placement later this year as part of his prize

Adam was one of 35 contestants who presented a three-minute thesis presentation at the E-Symposium, with a mix of clinically-based research as well as pharmaceutical lab-based work in the pharmaceutical science area. Adam’s presentation was based on a project he led in 2020/2021 which set up telehealth clinics for cardiology patients at Ballarat Base Hospital, which looked at review and education around post heart attack care and medicines management.

“I was given three minutes to present my research question, what I did, and what the results meant, and then was asked one or two questions,” Adam said.

“I received a 74 out of possible 75, and was surprised when I won, as I was up against mostly PhD students (I was a Masters student at the time).

“The project I presented was looking at whether our cardiac telehealth service made a difference to clinical outcomes for patients with heart attacks.” What we found was that there was a significantly higher likelihood that patients who see a cardiology pharmacist through the cardiac telehealth clinic are on the correct therapy and taking them appropriately in comparison to those patients prior to the clinic commencing.”

The project compared a group of patients prior to the cardiology pharmacist clinic commencing and matched them from patients who attended the clinic based on age, gender, type of heart attack and whether they had heart failure or not.

“Globally, we know that patients are pretty good at taking their medicines for the first month after their heart attack, but about half will drop off the medicines they should be on at the 12 month mark – and we know that that is linked to increased risk of heart attack and death,” Adam said. “The intention is that if we can get them to maintain that therapy for the first twelve months, then we can significantly reduce the likelihood of them having further heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and death.”

Adam believes the cardiac telehealth clinic will have also maintained care for patients who have previously suffered heart attacks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, where some other in-person programs weren’t as easily accessible. It also supported the outpatient cardiologist services by providing vital information on medicines and assisting in continuity of care.

“We knew that the clinic was working from a service perspective, through our telehealth program, but now we know it works from a clinical perspective too. Heart disease is still the number one killer in Australia – if you have chest pain, please come to hospital and we will look after you. Don’t put off chest pain because you’re worried about COVID.”

Adam has since received a Scholarship to commence a PhD at Monash University, investigating patterns and predictors of heart outcomes based on medicines used. He has been working with Ballarat Health Services since 2018.

“I’m really passionate about cardiovascular health in the Ballarat region – I really love working at the Base Hospital, and it’s important to know that you don’t need to be in a metro site to be doing meaningful and novel work.” I am grateful for the amazing mentors I have both in the clinical pharmacy and cardiology teams here, as well as my supervisors at Monash University. I intend to continue working at BHS during my PhD and give back where I can to mentoring pharmacists, nurses and doctors within the cardiology space.

PharmAlliance is a collaborative initiative between The University of North Carolina (of Chapel Hill), Monash University and University College London.