Medicines for Children’s 2024 highlights
2024 was another busy and productive year for the Medicines for Children team. As we look ahead to 2025, it is important to reflect on some of the main achievements from the last 12 months, and to take this opportunity to thank the healthcare professionals and families who gave up their time and expertise to help us to develop new materials for the website.
2024 was one of Medicine for Children’s busiest years yet, and we could not have done any of it without our dedicated programme board.
Thank you to the Medicines for Children programme board!
The board grew in number in 2024 and is now made up of ten people – paediatricians, paediatric pharmacists, nurses and other colleagues, representing the RCPCH, the NPPG and the children’s charity WellChild. Over the last year they have worked tirelessly, sharing the wisdom gained from their many combined years of paediatric medicines experience to help Medicines for Children achieve some brilliant milestones. We look forward to properly introducing the incredibly hard-working members of our board later in 2025.
New medicines information leaflets published
Over the last year we have also seen a surge in engagement from our amazing network of supporters, made up of nurses, doctors, pharmacists, allied health professionals and parents/carers, especially from those families linked to WellChild. They have offered us their time, their enthusiasm and their medical knowledge for us to be able to push ahead with developing new resources. They have guided our work based on their real-world experiences of giving medicines to children, whether from their view as parents in the home, or healthcare professionals working in clinics, hospitals, pharmacies or in the community.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank every person who contacted us this year to offer their expertise and support – because of you we were able to develop and publish 20 new medicines leaflets in 2024, which will support families in how to safely give these medicines to their children:
- Bonjela junior gel for mouth lesions – here
- Buprenorphine patches for severe pain – here
- Carbamazepine (rectal) for preventing seizures – here
- Chloral hydrate for dystonia – here
- Chloral hydrate for sedation before painless procedures – here
- Chloral hydrate for sleep – here
- Clonidine patches for dystonia – here
- Formoterol inhaler for asthma – here
- Glycopyrronium bromide (Glycopyrrolate) for hypersalivation/chronic drooling – here
- How to give phosphate or calcium from effervescent tablets – here
- Hyoscine patches to reduce saliva production – here
- Medicines shortages advice – here
- Omalizumab (Xolair) for severe asthma – here
- How to give potassium supplements using effervescent tablets – here
- Rivaroxaban for the prevention of blood clots – here
- Tacrolimus for nephrotic syndrome – here
- Tacrolimus to prevent rejection of organ transplant – here
- Tacrolimus ointment for eczema – here
- Tolterodine for bladder problems – here
- Vitamin K for vitamin K deficiency bleeding in newborns – here
Other key achievements in 2024
In addition to publishing new medicines information, we were also able to achieve some other key milestones in 2024, including:
- Twenty news articles/medicines safety alerts were published on the Medicines for Children website, available to read here.
- Twelve QR codes posters published for quick access to medicines commonly prescribed to children – grouped according to medical condition or clinical setting, available to view here
- The team submitted a journal article all about Medicines for Children to reach an international audience of medics – we will share this when it is published in 2025!
- We commissioned an external review of Medicines for Children – this will explore the real world impact of our information for families and look into how we can improve our resources in future. The findings from the review will be useful for future funding applications and to ensure we are moving in the right direction to meet our users’ needs. As a visitor to the Medicines for Cildren website, you can still feed into the review by sharing some information with us here.
- We worked with the brilliant PADDINGToN team to host their excellent resources to support parents/carers taking babies home from hospital with medicines, available to view here
- In October, the new medicines management app was ready for its ‘soft launch’. In this period the app was released on a small scale, whilst being checked for any issues or safety concerns. The app is now available to download here
- In December, it was announced that Medicines for Children has been shortlisted for 2025 HSJ Partnership Award “Best Provider of Digital Healthcare Services”. The winner of the awards will be announced in March 2025.
Looking ahead to 2025, we will continue to improve the resources available on the website and we will share more about our plans for the app.
As always we would love to hear from you with your ideas or feedback on our work at medicines.leaflets@rcpch.ac.uk
Thank you for a great year!