A recent press report indicated that the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) had patented key aspects of the MediConnect system, currently undergoing limited trials in Victoria and Tasmania.
In March 2002, the PGA lodged an international patent application for a "method and system for sharing personal health data", naming as inventors Vasken Demirian, Philip Dibben (both PGA officials) and Trevor Sinclair, of CR Group, a consultancy firm engaged by the PGA.
This is indeed a curious turn of events, given that what the PGA has patented is intellectual input from open, shared and public debate, that also included discussions with many consultants and individual professionals within the same framework.
Why would not all the above be entitled to a claim of being "co-patent holders"?
What sort of a game is the PGA playing?

If the PGA patent is upheld (it is likely to be legally challenged) then we would see a situation where the Federal Government, having funded the PGA some $5 million dollars to assist in developing the system for the same Federal Government that may now have to pay licence fees to use its own system.

This places the MediConnect system's future under a cloud.

Worse, it brings into question the ethics of the PGA and a resultant distrust by its alliance partners.
Many individual PGA members feel uncomfortable with these events.
Even non-members feel a sense of unease and discomfort surrounding these events.
The Commonwealth Dept of Health and Ageing has commissioned a review of the patent application.
Preliminary advice has indicated the patent application should be denied by the Australian Patent Office (IP Australia), on the grounds that "nothing has been invented".
Further legal opinion is required.
The wording of the patent application is described as "ambiguous", with "virtually no reference made to the technology that would be used to implement the invention."
"There is substantial similarity between the intellectual property claimed in the patent application and that contained in the Delivering a Better Medication Management System report delivered to the Commonwealth on December 15, 2000 by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, as part of the Third Community Pharmacy Agreement negotiations."
If legal opinion supports the PGA patent, then a claim would exist over future versions of MediConnect and other health systems.

Under international rules, the Guild's application has been referred to IP Australia for consideration, and the applicants have yet to request that it proceed to an examination where claims can be validated.

The results of the first MediConnect field trials in Launceston and Ballarat are expected by June.
Testing has involved Health Communication Network's Medical Director prescription-writing software, (used widely by GPs), and the Guild's own pharmacy prescription-dispensing software, WiniFred, plus a range of smaller software developers.

A foreshadowing of the results of the Mediconnect trial was illustrated in an excerpt published on the PGA website, in respect of a tender for a new research project launched in December 2003. The Q & A session following elicited this information:
question:
"What is the perception of the timeline around MediConnect and level of connectiveness that will occur over the next five to ten years?"

Answer:
"There is no ready answer to that. It is recognized now as a long term rather than short-term project. If everything had gone to plan, it would be up and running by now, but it has been considerably delayed. It is on trial in a couple of centres in Victoria and Tasmania. It is probably years away rather than months."

Both PGA members and nonmembers have expressed concern over the patenting events, as being connected to a process of "bad faith".
Criticism has been mounting for some time over various PGA behaviours, and in the wider community, the fact that PGA represents only one third of the pharmacist population, but is making decisions not in accord with the majority.
This patenting fiasco has served to reinforce the viewpoint that the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) should be the prime body representing Australian pharmacists in schemes such as MediConnect, and as such, should be the recipient of government funds for that purpose.

Unease is also being felt in PGA circles, with the Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement negotiations about to get under way.
The spiritual leader of this process was regarded as Kevin McAnuff, a PGA leader, who recently passed away.
With him went a considerable skill in negotiations, combined with a wider corporate knowledge and memory, leaving the PGA negotiating team unprepared and uncomfortable in their abilities to negotiate a suitable result with government.
Should the Federal Government succeed in disadvantaging the pharmacist community through a weak PGA performance, this could herald a loss of confidence in PGA leadership and a subsequent decline of influence and power.
The PGA is widely admired for its lobbying and negotiating skills, but in the life cycle of any product or service, one cannot escape the possibility (and inevitability) that the PGA is about to enter the downside of the bell-curve that traditionally depicts and forecasts events in that life cycle.
Against all this is the backdrop of the continuing efforts by Woolworths to work up an arrangement where they can gradually absorb a pharmacy service within their precinct, leading to legislative changes and outright ownership.
There has been no positive leadership involving a long-term strategy to head off Woolworths, except for more attempts at protectionism, and this is not satisfactory.

There is no doubt that the PGA will be under siege in 2004 from a variety of sources, and unless it ceases "playing games" and allows some external input, particularly with the Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement, the wider pharmacy community will be involved in a process of decline, and PGA will become a definite liability.