The Pharmacy Aseptics Collaboration aims to improve the patient experience by providing access to ready-to-administer intravenous medicines across care settings. This increases patient safety by reducing errors in the preparation of these medicines by manufacturing them in a specialist, licenced facility by highly trained staff.

There is currently limited capacity within pharmacy aseptics to produce these medicines, due to the highly technical and complex nature of aseptic preparation and manufacturing. However, the need for aseptic services continues to rise due to increasing need for cancer therapies, non-cancer immunotherapy and intravenous antibiotics. To meet this growing demand, capacity across the region must expand to ensure patients receive critical treatment.

The Pharmacy Aseptics Collaboration aims to deliver capacity of over 400,000 products per year which will deliver several benefits for the WYAAT organisations and their patients. By increasing the aseptic capacity, growth in demand for critical treatments will be met, as well as the ability to manufacture IV medicines, usually prepared in clinical areas by nurses. This will allow nursing time to be released back to direct patient care, improving clinical outcomes and patient experience.

In 2022, WYAAT was identified as a national pathfinder site and was allocated £24million of national capital from NHS England. Plans for the construction of the new pharmacy aseptic hub are at an advanced stage and development of a highly skilled workforce has already begun. The facility, which will be hosted by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, will create a new centralised aseptic hub to work alongside the existing aseptic facilities at the six organisations within WYAAT to deliver the benefits of the project.