Co-designing a service specification for a pharmacogenomic testing service in community pharmacy in England

Abstract Introduction: Pharmacogenomics is a novel arena of medicine that uses patients’ DNA to support pharmacists and prescribers selecting the most appropriate medicine for patients.Aim: To use an online consensus panel to review and validate a service specification for a PGx testing service in the English community pharmacy setting.Method: A consensus panel comprising of pharmacists, prescribers and patients was convened to participate in a co-design process of critical comment, reviewing the operationalisation of Behaviour Change Techniques identified in a previous study. Panel members completed a survey prior to attending a workshop to discuss, agree and confirm the content for a service specification. Following the workshop recommended strategies for operationalisation were extracted and informed a final version of the service specification.Results: From the consensus panel, strategies for operationalisation of the Behaviour Change Techniques were identified including a pre-launch engagement event, subject matter expert support for healthcare professionals, provision of supporting materials and training requirements for clinical decision making. These were all incorporated into the service specification as part of the co-design.Conclusion: Designing a community pharmacy led pharmacogenomic service using co-design methodology has resulted in critical feedback, ideas validation and operationalisation of behavioural science generated Behaviour Change Techniques to develop a pragmatic service specification. This is more likely to result in both pharmacist engagement to offer and deliver a community pharmacist led pharmacogenomic testing service and prescriber acceptance of recommendations for any changes to patients’ prescriptions.