Statement of purpose

The Victorian Therapeutic Advisory Group (VicTAG) is an independent, not-for profit association. VicTAG members are pharmacists, clinical pharmacologists and other clinicians from Victorian public hospitals.

VicTAG’s purpose is to promote quality use of medicines by sharing unbiased, evidence-based information about drug therapy and to support the goals of, and facilitate the National Medicines Policy of access, quality, and safety in the use of medicines in Victorian hospitals.

VicTAG’s objectives are to:

• support drug and therapeutics committees;
• promote rational, high quality, cost-effective use of medicines in hospitals and the wider community; and
• investigate and evaluate new initiatives in therapeutics.

VicTAG through its multi-disciplinary membership and acting as an advisory group to hospitals, health professionals and others will achieve its mission through the following activities:

• develop or adopt hospital-developed guidelines aimed at standardisation of hospital practices;
• develop, in collaboration with members, appropriate policies on issues relevant to hospital drug and therapeutics committees, for example, drug and therapeutic committee drug formulary applications, funding of high cost drugs, and drug policies;
• communicate with drug and therapeutics committees on items of common interest, for example new pharmaceuticals, medication safety, and policy formulation;
• provide input into education programs in relation to access, quality, and safety of medicines at local, state and national levels;
• develop, disseminate and support strategies to assist hospitals in achieving the safe and efficacious use of medicines;
• form appropriate working groups to deal with specific issues relating to access, quality, safety and the quality use of medicines in Victorian hospitals;
• provide a support forum to hospital drug and therapeutics committees to advance work in specific areas such as electronic medication management including electronic prescribing and decision support;
• support research into the quality use of medicines; and
• liaise with organisations of similar purpose to achieve common goals.