The Department of Pharmacy of Renji Hospital is a comprehensive medical technology department integrating pharmacotherapy, teaching, scientific research, and administration, forming a four-in-one distribution pattern of Renji East, West, South, and North Hospitals, with outpatient and emergency pharmacies, inpatient pharmacies, the cadre health care pharmacy,Drug Storage, Pharmacy Intravenous Admixture Services, clinical pharmacy service center, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Marine Drug Integration Innovation Center. There are 186 pharmacy professional and technical personnel, including 4 chief pharmacists/researchers, 11 deputy chief pharmacists/associate researchers, 3 PhD mentors, 2 MS mentors, 13 pharmacist with doctorate degree, 26 pharmacists with master degree, and more than 80% of the pharmacists with bachelor degree or above. To assure medication supply and quality, the Department of Pharmacy adheres to the core of ‘optimal medication use’, takes ‘enhancing clinical service and research innovation’ as the starting point, and focuses on building an innovative medication management system with ‘evidence-based pharmacy as the core and clinical specialty as the basis’. The Department of Pharmacy has made significant achievements in research and practice, and won the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of the Ministry of Education (2022), the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of the Ministry of Natural Resources (2023), and the first prize of Marine Science and Technology Award twice (2018, 2022), and the Gold Medal of China Hospital Management Award (2022).
The Department of Pharmacy has steadily promoted the automatic drug information and dispensing system within hospitals, continuously optimized the process of medication management and use, and improved the service quality and efficiency of pharmacists. We have established a closed-loop management system for anesthesia drugs and opioids with full electronic tracking with automatic drug dispensing machine, unit-dose packaging system, pneumatic tube system, intelligent management system for anesthetic drugs and opioids, cold chain monitoring system, temperature and humidity monitoring system, etc., strengthening intelligent medication use management, ensuring the accuracy of drug dispensing; we have continuously optimized the prescription verification system using information technology to implement prescription review and real-time intervention, and set up an independent medication counselling room to ensure medication safety; we have equipped our pharmacies with horizontal laminar flow hoods, biological safety cabinets and intravenous drug dispensing robots to carry out centralized compounding and dispensing including hazardous drugs, parenteral nutrition drugs and other intravenous drugs to ensure medication use safety and occupational safety. The Department of Pharmacy has successfully passed the review of ‘RTAC International Accreditation’. In the year of 2023, the Department of Pharmacy compounded and dispensed medications for 220,000 hospitalized patients, and dispensed about 4.8 million ambulatory and emergency prescriptions.
The Department of Pharmacy stands on the frontline of clinical optimal medication use, and has established an innovative clinical pharmacist driven management system for common chronic diseases, and has carried out formulary development and clinical medication use evaluation, antimicrobial stewardship, prescription reviews, off-label drug use management and adverse drug event reporting management, etc., to create a safe medication use environment. Pharmacists participate in multidisciplinary treatment (MDT) discussions, provide drug plasma concentration monitoring services, and expand the scope of pharmacy services by establishing pharmacy outpatient clinics, community services, online pharmacy services, etc. The Department of Pharmacy has created a ‘research-oriented clinical pharmacist training model’ (won the silver medal in the profession management group of the 2021 China Hospital Management Award) to encourage young talents to stand out: Jiao Weihua won the National Excellent Youth Award (2020), Yang Fan won the Young Scientist of the Ministry of Science and Technology (2022), and 12 clinical pharmacists were awarded the Shanghai Science and Technology Rising Star, Pujiang Talent, or were elected for Yangfan Plan and other talent projects in Shanghai. Director Lin Houwen was awarded the 17th Shanghai Science and Technology Elite (2022) and the National Top Ten Medical Promotion Experts (2023). The Department of Pharmacy took the lead in establishing the first municipal-level "Shanghai Anticoagulant Pharmacist Alliance" and the first cross-regional "Yangtze River Delta Anticoagulant Pharmacist Alliance" in China, which facilitates the development of a regionally standardized anticoagulation management model.
The Department of Pharmacy is one of the first national clinical pharmacist training bases, the training base for talents in short supply (clinical pharmacists) of the National Health Commission, the clinical pharmacist training base of the Chinese Medical Association and the clinical pharmacist training base of Shanghai. More than 200 outstanding clinical pharmacists from various provinces and cities across China graduated from these training programs. Meanwhile, as the graduation practice base of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Health Medical College, and the School of Clinical Pharmacy of Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, the Department of Pharmacy has long been committed to building a high-quality clinical pharmacy education platform and promoting the sharing of clinical pharmacy education resources in the Yangtze River Delta. In addition, the Department of Pharmacy focuses on the structure and function of marine symbiotic organism drug-derived molecules for major diseases such as cancer, infectious diseases, and inflammatory diseases, and has established multiple drug innovation research platforms such as the platform of discovery and structural modification of marine drug-derived molecules, the platform of total synthesis and biosynthesis, the platform of microbial screening and fermentation, the platform of pharmacological activity screening and target-mechanism, etc., so as to comprehensively improve the discovery efficiency of new drug-derived molecules and broaden their source pathways, and advance pharmaceutical disciplines.
In the past ten years, the Department of Pharmacy has won 50 national projects (including 44 national natural science foundation projects), led 3 national key R&D projects, and 1 national major science and technology project, with total funding of more than 80 million, published 226 SCI papers in internationally recognized journals, authorized 25 national invention patents (including 2 international PCT patents), developed 3 candidate new drugs with independent intellectual property rights. The project ‘Preparation Methods and Uses of Butacrynolactone Compounds’ achieved 10 million RMB in scientific commercialization. The competitiveness of the Department of Pharmacy of Renji Hospital continues to hold the first place in the pharmacy series of Shanghai public hospitals!