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The position paper of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) highlights the importance of the prudent use of antimicrobial drugs through antibiotic stewardship to ensure efficient therapy for patients with life-threatening infections. EAHP calls on national governments and health system managers to utilise the specialised background and knowledge of the hospital pharmacist in multi-professional antibiotic stewardship teams. In addition, the paper recommends the universal application of infection prevention and control measures among healthcare professionals. Due to the lack of funding, EAHP urges increased investment to support the development of innovative proposals and the encouragement of practice-based research projects to investigate new fields of infectious disease control such as immunotherapy and to optimise the cost-effectiveness of systems for surveillance on antibiotic use and resistance. In relation to the 'One Health approach' of the European Commission, EAHP strongly supports regulatory oversight and proper implementation of measures in the veterinary and agriculture sectors at European, national and local level.

Both electronic health (eHealth) and mobile health (mHealth) are becoming prominent components of healthcare. In order for healthcare electronic services to be safe and effective and add genuine value to the system, the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) believes that these should be developed in close collaboration with healthcare professionals including hospital pharmacists, and patients. Consequently, the EAHP calls in its position paper upon national governments and health systems across Europe to work towards (1) systematic and European Union-wide achievement of electronic prescribing, administration and use of electronic medical records; (2) ensuring barcoding of medicines to the single units in primary packages to enable more widespread take-up of bedside scanning in European hospitals, thus improving patient safety; (3) appropriate regulatory oversight mechanisms for mHealth applications to ensure that they have a positive impact and adequately protect patient data; (4) provision of appropriate eHealth/mHealth training opportunities to healthcare professionals and promotion of digital health literacy; and (5) involvement of hospital pharmacists in the design, specification of parameters and evaluation of information and communication technology within the medicines processes.