GRICS-funded study finds increase in dispensing of oral anticancer medications

A study funded by GRICS has been published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, the official journal of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE).

Over the financial year 2023/24, GRICS made surplus funds available to its member health services to implement local cancer service improvement initiatives. One recipient was West Gippsland Healthcare Group (WGHG), funded to investigate where supportive care could be embedded into care for patients undergoing oral chemotherapy regimes. Such patients are often not captured for routine supportive care screening, as their medication is prescribed by hospital or community pharmacists rather than chemotherapy units. The WGHG project challenges the misguided assumption that ‘It’s just a tablet, so it can’t be too bad for me.’

Part of this project aimed to quantify prescribing rates for oral chemotherapy, in collaboration with Monash University School of Rural Health researchers Dr Michael James Leach (formerly data manager at LMICS) and Dr Eli Ristevski. LMICS Clinical Director Dr Louise Bettiol contributed a primary care perspective to the work, reviewing transcripts at several stages.

The team’s findings were published in April in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 2025; 34:e70126. They found that dispensing of non-hormonal oral anticancer medications (particularly protein kinase inhibitors) in Australia increased over 2014–2023.

Despite this increased dispensing of non-hormonal oral anticancer medications, the level of clinical supervision and support available to people taking these medications still tends to be lower than for patients on parenteral anti-cancer medications (those not administered through the mouth or intestinal tract, such as injected medicines). The paper’s authors suggest this represents a growing scope to expand adherence and safety initiatives for oral anticancer medications, particularly protein kinase inhibitors.