Department News 2026
FEB 2026
February was an action-packed month for our department and went by in a flash.
It all started with the arrival of our wonderful new ERASMUS+ student Lieke Mass, from the University of Utrecht. Lieke is a final year pharmacy student and will be conducting a project entitled “Aligning the Pharmacy Game with Clinical Pharmacy Competencies: A Pre-Implementation Study at LFU Innsbruck”. Liekes cheerie personality fits perfectly into our little team and we very much look forward to working with her over the next 6 months.
We were honoured to be invited to join our Scandinavian colleagues at The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) in Tromsø in their clinical pharmacy and pharmacy research network which encompasses all Scandinavian countries (and some non-Scandinavian ones). We very much look forward to driving pharmacy service development through new research collaborations: https://uit.no/research/clinicalpharmacyresearch .
Before long, it was time to lift the curtain on our congress project after almost 16months of preparation. Between the 17.-20th February, we welcomed the two most renowned international clinical pharmaceutical societies, Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE) and the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP), to Innsbruck.
Aligning with the WHO patient safety theme “Five steps of medication safety”, over 260 scientists and pharmacists from a total of 28 countries across Europe, Asia and Australia came to the University of Innsbruck, to network, exchange research and discuss cutting edge professional topics.
A diverse range of keynote lectures, workshops, and expert courses delivered by internationally renowned experts invited discussion. Topics such as "Improving treatment outcomes through pharmaceutical health services research," "Challenges and solutions in appropriate prescribing and risk-benefit analysis," "Improving medication therapy safety through an electronic, closed-loop system," "Patient engagement in healthcare," and "Preventing patient harm at transition to outpatient care" were discussed in depth.
In close collaboration with the Austrian Chamber of Pharmacists and the Association of Austrian Hospital Pharmacists, our department, was responsible for organizing and conducting the event. We are proud to say it all went without a hitch.
A particular heartfelt thank you goes to our wonderful local team and our extended international team in Iceland. They were wonderful in helping to make this event a success and I can’t thank them enough.
Tune back in for March, cause as the season’s changes to Spring, there will be a lot of great additions to the team and events to report from.
JAN 2026
The new year has started just as diverse and exciting as the old one ended.
It all started with the publication of the national ASQS "Recommendations for Improving Medication Therapy Safety (MTS) in Acute Care Facilities and Inpatient Long-Term Care." We are very proud to have contributed to this and hope that these recommendations will be implemented in all Austrian hospitals. Following last year's legislative amendment, this is another important milestone in ensuring medication therapy safety across Austria.
The next piece of good news came from our outstanding PhD student, Ms. Danielle Hochhold, who has been invited to present her work at this year's "Health Service Research and Pharmacy Practice Conference" at Queen's University Belfast. Furthermore, her latest publication (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39775382/) has been selected as one of the top six papers of 2025. Danielle, you are amazing! We are so proud of you!
In Zams, we were able to contribute to the continuing education series of the interdisciplinary team at the hospital. Medical Director Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wöll and our former master's student Dr. Claudia Praxmarer invited us to present our delirium research project.
And we weren't idle in other ways either. We were able to contribute a seminar on barriers and facilitating factors in implementation research for the MSc in Drug Therapy Safety at Heidelberg University, gave a presentation on AI in everyday clinical practice for the continuing education series of the hospital pharmacy of the Tyrol Clinics, and published another paper on "A theoretically informed interview study of strategic stakeholders on their readiness to implement a pharmacist competency framework for hospital practice" (DOI to follow). We've been working diligently across the institute on the new BA/MA Pharmacy curriculum, and our AURORA research network met to discuss the next hot off-the-press news – watch this space.
Last but not least, there was plenty to celebrate, from birthdays to passing german exams (B2). We're already looking forward to February, when we'll be welcoming new colleagues, hosting PCNE and ESCP conferences, and hopefully share some more positive news with you.