Professor Ian Bates has been appointed as the director of the FIP Global Pharmaceutical Observatory (FIP-GPO) by FIP. The appointment was made by the FIP Bureau at its April meeting. Prof. Bates will take office tomorrow.

FIP has been collating and analysing global pharmacy workforce and practice data regularly since 2006 from more than 90 countries and territories. The focus over 14 years and across FIP’s member organisations has been to produce data intelligence on workforce capacity, gender distributions, sector of practice, licensing/regulation, and education and training capacity.  

The FIP-GPO builds on the long-term foundational history that FIP has in collating and using pharmacy-related data to create a global data hub that can be researched to inform advocacy work in areas such as policy development, decision-making, the advancement of pharmaceutical practice, health and life sciences, education and skills training, and workforce intelligence. The FIP-GPO delivers an expansive set of validated information to drive evidence-based analysis of past, current and future trends.

The FIP-GPO monitors trends in the global pharmaceutical workforce to better understand the supply of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy support workers, and to correlate trends with population growth demographics and disease burden.

Given the importance of FIP’s repository of data and source of intelligence, the FIP Bureau approved a new FIP position of director for the FIP-GPO. Prof. Bates, in this post, will direct the work to improve, refine, expand and grow the intelligence through partnerships for the benefit of FIP member organisations and partners, with the overall aim of supporting transformation of practice to meet the increasing healthcare demands being experienced across all countries.