The people behind the website and resources
This website is provided for you by Choice and Medication©, and is run by Mistura Enterprise Ltd®, a fiercely independent organisation run by highly qualified professionals and specialists in mental health and mental health medicines. All income comes from subscriptions from subscribing organisations, with no income or support from any Pharmaceutical Industry or other commercial sources. From 1st October 2024 there were some changes to the structure due to retirement and reduced hours.
Managing Director
Lisa Armstrong is the Managing Director for both Mistura Enterprise Ltd® and Mistura Informatics Ltd® working on the Choice and Medication© website and MaPPs 2©. Lisa is responsible for all aspects of running the IT company and managing the ever-growing clinical and operational teams. She coordinates and manages the 3 teams across the UK in order to ensure the software is both functional and up-to-date. Lisa puts her 15 years of B2B IT Business Operations experience, and BSc Hons in Business Management. to good use. As an amazing multi-tasker, leader, strong communicator and negotiator, she keeps us well motivated and organised while ensuring we always bear in mind our internal and external customer needs. Lisa is based at our company administrative headquarters in Ashington near the South East Northumberland Coastline.
Customer Service Manager
Daniel Price is now the Customer Service Manager. He is an award winner for outstanding customer service, with over 8 years in
customer-facing sales. Dan understands the importance of user experience
and quality hardware. He has a background in Aerospace engineering.
CEO and Professional Lead
Dr. Dawn Price is a registered independent prescribing specialist pharmacist (GPhC number 2039501). She has over 15 years senior management and clinical experience in Secondary Care Pharmacy, Substance Misuse, Clinical Justice and Specialist Mental Health Pharmacy. In addition, Dawn has extensive experience in primary care, working in community pharmacy and managing medication review clinics in general practice as well as being one of the first medicines management pharmacists (BMJ 2000).
Dawn is well known for working at a national level as the Royal Pharmaceutical Society expert representative for Substance Misuse working with Public Health England for both the review of the UK Clinical Guidelines (The Orange Guidelines) and the Non-Medical Prescribing in Substance Misuse Guidelines. Committee Member of the steering group for the NMPSM (Non-Medical Prescribing in Substance Misuse), Committee Member of College of Mental Health Pharmacy (2009-2010) and was Vice Chair of UK Psychiatric Pharmacy Group (2007-2009). Previous positions held include National Chief Pharmacist and Non-Medical Prescribing Lead at Addaction (2011-2016), Deputy Chief Pharmacist at Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (2009-2011), Chief Pharmacist, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (2008-2009), Chief Pharmacist South of Tyne and Wearside Mental Health Trust (2004-2008).
Dawn’s IT research interests now lie in HCD (Human Computer Design), applying usability testing of health information systems to ensure they are both usable, have utility (useful) and positive health outcomes. As a result Dawn has researched the positive impact on medicine adherence following intervention with the Choice and Medication© health information website for patients with mental health conditions. In the past, Dawn has also project managed the deployment of web based pharmacy systems, e-prescribing systems and e-learning systems within Healthcare Organisations. This includes deployment of near patient testing analysers in a novel service for patients on clozapine with added value for health supported by independent prescribing clinical pharmacists. Following presentation at the European Association for Hospital Pharmacy (EAHP) in 2007 this is now standard practice for mental health pharmacy.
Dawn was Managing Director of both Mistura Enterprise Ltd® (Choice and Medication©) and Mistura Informatics Ltd® (MaPPs 2©) but is now Chief Executive Officer, professional lead, and co-founder.
Head of IT and Programming
Ikenna Egwu is our Head of Infrastructure and Programming. Ikenna has a doctorate in Computing Engineering and Technology. At Mistura, he uses his 15 years experience programming health care systems in NHS Infrastructure and Health Care Information System Design to help us create and maintain all the Mistura IT Products and Services we have available, including Choice and Medication.
Content Team
Hazel Betteney
Hazel is an Advanced Clinical Pharmacist (Medicines Information), for
Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, based at Roseberry
Park Hospital, Middlesbrough. Hazel joined us in April 2022 and is our
"Radar", keeping us up-to-date with developments.
Amanda Parkinson
Amanda has extensive mental health pharmacy experience, having worked as a Lead Pharmacist for Fylde Coast and Morecambe Bay within Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust for 20 years. As an independent pharmacist prescriber (IP), she worked with the tertiary PTSD service for 13 years and then, following retirement from the Trust, continued to work as an IP within Lancaster Medical Practice. She has now retired from the NHS.
Amanda is a former council member and Registrar for the College of Mental Health Pharmacy and continues to be a credentialed member of the CMHP. Amanda joined us in April 2024 and is responsible for the ongoing rolling review of patient information about mental health conditions and treatment options.
James Lee
James is the lead perinatal mental health pharmacist at Devon Partnership NHS Trust and a credentialed member of the CMHP. He has worked in mental health since 2012 covering a range of adult, older peoples and specialist inpatient and community teams. He has been covering perinatal services since 2016 and helped set up Jasmine Lodge, the Mother and Baby Unit in Exeter which he covered as an clinical pharmacist. He also was part of the NICE guideline committee for ‘NG181 Rehabilitation for adults with complex psychosis’. James is also an independent pharmacist prescriber and teaches the perinatal mental health module on the Psych 2 CMHP course.
Stephen Bazire
Professor Stephen Bazire BPharm, DipPsychPharm, FRPharmS, FCMHP, GHP Gold Medal 2012, MBE is an Honorary Professor, School of Pharmacy, University of East Anglia in Norwich, a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, was awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to pharmacy, and awarded the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists Gold Medal in 2013 for outstanding contributions to pharmacy in the NHS. Until he fully retired from the NHS in 2015, he was a Consultant Pharmacist (GPhC number 2022821) for Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (having been Chief Pharmacist there from 1986 to 2011). In 2024 he was named by the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists as one of the 100 top champions of NHS/hospital pharmacy over the past century in its Centenary publication.
Steve is an internationally known speaker on several topics (e.g. ADHD, Medication Choice, psychosis, Bipolar Disorder and others). He has been Chairman and Council Member of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy, a member of the Council of British Association for Psychopharmacology, Visiting Fellow and External Examiner for the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Aston University in Birmingham, a Trustee of Mind in Norfolk (2014-2021), a member of Drug Science, and Bipolar UK's Clinical Advisory Group. He also led the successful implementation of automation and electronic prescribing in his mental health pharmacy service.
Steve is now Honorary Consultant for Mistura Enterprise Ltd® (Choice and Medication©) and co-founder, having led the content development for the website since it was launched in 2008. His aim has been to provide information in a variety of ways including online formats and downloadable leaflets, because "one size does not fit all".
Professor Bazire is probably best known as the author of the Psychotropic Drug Directory, of which there have been 32 editions
(latest 2024), with over half a million copies sold worldwide. The PDD has now moved to the
Pharmaceutical Press and MedicinesComplete. Steve is now attempting to retire (please don't laugh) and as from 1.10.24 is now advising the new C&M team and assisting with the user interfaces and carrying out some author roles.
Previous authors have included Debbie Marriott from Somerset and Anita Solanki from Leeds.
Declaration
No one connected with this website stands to gain anything whatsoever from any decisions or choices you make as a result of reading the content of the website. We are fiercely independent. Our funding comes purely from subscriptions, with no Pharma Industry or other influence whatsoever.
This is not true of all websites so beware of websites where there can be a hidden potential bias.