As the Health Innovation Network’s Polypharmacy: Getting the Balance Right programme draws to a close, a suite of new reports highlights its transformative impact on patient safety and clinical practice across England.  

And in the East Midlands, we are pleased to share that two of the key resources for healthcare staff will be sustained beyond the end of the programme.  

The programme was launched in April 2022 to address the urgent and growing challenge of overprescribing and problematic polypharmacy - when a patient is taking multiple medicines, some of which may no longer be necessary or could be causing harm.  

The scale of the issue is considerable. In March 2025, more than 718,000 people aged 65 and over in England were taking 10 or more medicines, a figure projected to exceed 1.1 million by 2035 without effective intervention. 

In the East Midlands, we addressed the three pillars of the programme to engage healthcare staff across the region:

1. Population health management: we supported webinars to demonstrate how NHS data could be used to identify patients most at risk of harm from their medicines.
2. Education and training: we helped upskill the primary care workforce to confidently and safely stop unnecessary medicines by holding Communities of Practice and Action Learning Sets.
3. Changing public behaviour: we shared co-produced resources to support patients in having better, shared-decision-making conversations about their medicines. 

Resources covering work across these topics can be accessed on our webpage. 

The Communities of Practice helped facilitate learning and development for clinicians across a range of pharmacy-related topics. We’re pleased to share that these will continue to run, led by the School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. In addition, the Action Learning Set workshops to increase clinicians confidence in addressing polypharmacy with patients will also continue – and will be run by the training hubs in each locality. 

Across the region, we also promoted the use of vital resources to empower patients in discussions about their medication. These resources, translated into 12 community languages will remain available for healthcare teams to use to help patients to share their thoughts and concerns about their medicines with healthcare professionals. 

Professor Tony Avery, National Clinical Director for Prescribing for NHS England, said: “Tackling the complex challenge of problematic polypharmacy can sometimes feel overwhelming, so with support from NHS England, the Health Innovation Network has successfully developed structured approaches for healthcare professionals that provide a valuable resource to help ensure that medicines are being used effectively and safely, aligning with patient goals.” 

Find out more:  

• Read a news summary of the impact of the national programme  

• To learn more about the programme's achievements, read the Impact Report, Health Economics Analysis, and Learning Review. 

• Read a reflective blog from the programme leads, Clare Howard and Amy Semple.  

• Access patient materials, webinar recordings and guides from the Health Innovation Network website. 

• Stay connected with future work by joining the Health Innovation Network Polypharmacy Shared Learning Network.