AWTTC is an NHS organisation and delivers a range of services. These services support the best use of medicines to help patients in Wales be healthier and better-informed.
We employ scientists, pharmacists, clinical pharmacologists, general practitioners, health economists, medical writers and administrators. Our staff work on health technology assessments; medicines optimisation, medicines safety and toxicology; and analysing prescribing data. AWTTC is based in the Routledge Academic Centre in University Hospital Llandough.
We develop innovative partnerships to help patients in Wales get the best outcomes from their medicines. We work with patients, carers and patient organisations; healthcare professionals; the pharmaceutical industry; Welsh Government and UK organisations to produce guidance on the best use of medicines to make sure patients in Wales receive appropriate care.
Below is a list of the key AWTTC services.
Medicines in Wales are routinely funded following guidance from two sources: the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG).
AWTTC supports AWMSG whose aims are to ensure that access to medicines in Wales is fair, timely and continuously improving for the people of Wales. AWTTC also co-ordinates the decisions of Individual Patient Funding request (IPFR) panels across Wales and the One Wales Medicines process, implemented to enable access to those medicines not routinely available in NHS Wales, for example, in circumstances where an unmet clinical need has been identified for a patient cohort.
For more information, see our Accessing medicines sections.
Medicines optimisation is about ensuring that the right patients gets the right choice of medicine, at the right time. The All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG) was established to provide advice on medicines optimisation to Welsh Government.
This programme of work is managed and coordinated with the help of AWTTC which provides clinical, scientific and administrative support to AWMSG and its subgroup the All Wales Prescribing Advisory Group (AWPAG).
AWMSG’s current goals are aligned to the Welsh Government’s A healthier Wales: long term plan for health and social care, and provide the foundation for its medicines optimisation work programme.
For more information, see our Medicines optimisation guidance, resources and data section.
Yellow Card Centre (YCC) Wales is a part of AWTTC and is one of five regional adverse drug reaction (ADR) monitoring centres, acting on behalf of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
The work of YCC Wales aims to reduce harm and improve medicines safety. YCC Wales has a vital educational and communicating role to encourage suspected adverse reaction reporting via the Yellow Card scheme to both patients and local health professionals in Wales.
Staff at YCC Wales are available to give advice on Yellow Card reporting and offer education and training sessions about suspected ADRs to all health professionals and patient groups.
The Welsh National Poisons Unit (WNPU) is part of the National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) and provides healthcare professionals with accurate advice 24 hours a day throughout the year on the toxicity of substances and how to manage exposures to them.
WNPU is one branch of AWTTC. Because of the sheer number of toxicologically relevant substances in existence, healthcare professionals need access to accurate information about these substances’ toxicity and how exposures should be managed. The role of the NPIS is to provide both a telephone advice service and the internet database TOXBASE®