Fighting back addiction: Assessing the use of medication assisted treatment for opioid addiction

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is a specialty of laboratory medicine that occurs at the bedside or near the patient when receiving health services. Despite its established clinical utility and consumer demand in the community pharmacy, the implementation of POCT within this setting has remained modest for a variety of reasons. One possible solution to this problem is the concept of co-creation – the partnership between consumer and manufacturer in the development of value for a service or device.Using the theoretical underpinning of co-creation, this study aimed to investigate perceptions of point-of-care-testing (POCT) industry leadership on the community pharmacy market in the United States to uncover reasons for limited implementation within community pharmacies.Participants were recruited for this study through the use of snowball sampling. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants via telephone. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and entered into a qualitative analysis software program to summarize the data.Five key themes were uncovered: gaps in understanding, areas of positive impact, barriers to implementation, facilitators of implementation, and community pharmacy – a potential major player.Through uncovering gaps in perceptions, it may be possible to leverage the U.S. pharmacy industry's size, potential for scalability, and ease of patient access to further patient care.