Tokyo Week 4 - Wednesday June 22, 2016
Today we visited the national cancer center in Tsukuji, Tokyo. Things I learned:
- Most of the dispensing pharmacy’s scripts at Keio University Hospital were filled for outpatients. This struck me as odd, since most hospitals in the U.S. fill mostly inpatient scripts. Today we learned that was an exception. The National Cancer Center fills 80% inpatient, and 20% outpatient scripts. With the National Insurance coverage, it is cheaper to fill scripts in a community pharmacy than in a hospital.
- Japan runs their own clinical trials for many drugs. Although drugs can be approved based on trials from the United States and other countries, many times the studies will not have enough Japanese patients to show efficacy for the drug.
- Although the clean room at this hospital used more precautions than the one at Keio, it still would not have passed the U.S. standards. They don’t use booties here! In addition, pharmacists do the sterile compounding for chemotherapy, but for other sterile compounds, they can just send the vial and bag to the floor and nurses are the ones who will mix it before administration. Side note: They use PhaSeal here and they love it! However, they did mention that there is a lot of waste with the single-dose vials, so they’re looking into options for multi-dose vials.
