The Annual Pharmacy Symposium brings together undergraduate and postgraduate students, academic staff, stakeholders and collaborators to present outcomes of student research projects as oral and poster presentations. During the Symposium final year pharmacy students completing their Master of Pharmacy degree present their dissertation during an oral presentation. An award for the best presentation is generously sponsored by Combino Pharm Malta.
The 2019 the recipient of the best Master of Pharmacy Research Presentation award is Martina Scicluna. Ms Scicluna is working on a dissertation on tests that can be used at patients’ bedside or in clinics to test the haemoglobin level in the blood. In her study, Ms Scicluna compared the diagnostic accuracy measures of two point-of-care devices against standard laboratory testing, used to measure haemoglobin. Testing was implemented on healthy participants and also implemented in patients who require monitoring of haemoglobin levels namely patients suffering from chronic kidney disease and diabetes.
The contribution of this research work is the identification of accurate point-of-care devices available on the market to measure haemoglobin, their limitations and opportunities for use in patient monitoring.