Message from Rachel Lambert-Forsyth, CEO of the British Pharmacological Society
2023 was a unique year for the BPS. I would like to begin by thanking the entire staff team, and the members and volunteers who have helped us deliver projects large and small. This collaborative approach has ensured we have achieved the aims set out in our three-year strategy.
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In the middle of 2023, we took the difficult decision to restructure the staff team. Council and I took these decisions seriously, and I want to thank everyone for their resilience throughout this period. We have tried our hardest to ensure that the restructure has not disrupted the work of our members, and we remain committed to helping you promote your science through journals, engagement projects, meetings and BPS content, and to offering opportunities for our members to develop their careers through bursaries, grants, prizes and awards. The Society has thrived on members working in partnership with a professional staff team and I have been delighted to see so many projects continue throughout this disruption – a testament to the commitment, passion and participation of all involved.
One of the highlights of 2023 was hosting the 19th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology in Glasgow, Scotland. It demonstrated how important it is for us all to connect on a global scale, and how impactful these large networking opportunities can be, especially for early career pharmacologists. It was also one of many meetings we held that reminded us that the BPS knows how to run an effective event – from an unbeatable scientific programme to wonderful social events including a fun-filled Cèilidh, it was great to see delegates enjoying their time in Glasgow.
My thanks to all those involved in organising the Congress – it takes an unseen level of preparation to pull an event like this off and I want to extend my thanks to all those who played their part over the last decade!
We continued to look for ways to engage early career audiences, expand the reach of our journals, run workshops and webinars, and support networking. We are now looking at developing our next strategy, and the work we did in 2023 will help us to produce a plan that brings the pharmacological community even more of those opportunities and creates new ways of working together to advance the discipline.
The Society has our members at its heart, and I would love to hear from you if you have an idea, want to get involved with a project, or simply want to share your enthusiasm for pharmacology – together we can ensure the BPS expands it reach and capitalises on the successes of 2023 resulting in an even stronger Society in the future.
Thank you for being part of our story. If you have any comments or questions about this annual review, please contact us at communications@bps.ac.uk.
Message from Professor Sir Mark Caulfield, President of the BPS 2024-2026
I would like to begin by thanking Professor Clive Page, who was President of the BPS 2022-2023. The work he did during his term has ensured a renewed direction for the Society, and I intend to follow in his footsteps in my own term as President.
2023 was a significant year for the BPS. For members, it was another year of adjusting to new ways of working post-pandemic, but with some aspects returning to normal, such as more global travel – which resulted in a busy and successful 19th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology– and university campuses opening up again, providing better opportunities for our academic members to work and research.
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It was also a year of great challenge for the BPS. It has long been expected that income from our publishing portfolio would drop due Open Access policy changing the balance between subscription and Open Access income. In 2023 this reality started to directly show on the balance sheet of the BPS. Combined with the increasing costs associated with delivering high quality meetings and operational costs rising, we had to look at our own operational activity, and explore ways to future-proof the Society’s funds while remaining committed to our objectives. Council worked closely with Rachel Lambert Forsyth, our CEO, last year to agree a restructure. While this decision was difficult for all involved, it will ensure the BPS can run for many years to come, continuing to benefit the pharmacology community, and, as a result, the picture of drug research, development, discovery and prescribing for patients in the UK and globally.
2023 marked the mid-point for our three-year strategy, and Council worked with the senior leadership team to review our objectives and identify how we could continue to work towards them when finances are under pressure. And while our core objectives remain unchanged, we have had to create more streamlined approaches to projects. A key part of this is to encourage more member involvement in BPS work, and I encourage you to show your support by attending meetings, getting involved in committee work, writing content for us, submitting your research to our journals and encouraging colleagues, students and your wider network to engage with the BPS.
One of the most important projects undertaken in 2023 was the independent review of the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) exam, chaired by Prof Dame Jane Dacre. This is a joint BPS Medical Schools Council initiative which has now been sat by over 80,000 medical students or doctors. The outcome of this report recommends that appropriate and mandatory assessment of prescribing should remain as a condition of practice for doctors in the UK.
The report went on to recommend that the UK Prescribing Safety Assessment should be considered as a requirement for medical practice in the UK as either a summative assessment as an exit from medical school or as an entry requirement for FY1. It should also be required for international medical graduates licensing (IMGs) via the PLAB route for entry at FY1 and FY2. This is an important recommendation for the UK PSA, aims to enhance patient safety by creating more competence and consistency among those prescribing and there is circumstantial evidence it has reduced alongside other measures prescribing errors. We will continue to work alongside our partners, the Medical Schools Council, to consider how best to implement the recommendations. This project highlights one of the many ways in which the BPS are working to create demonstrable change for patients through pharmacological research and practice and we are very grateful to all the members whoc give their time to set questions and assure the high quality of this assessment.
I would like to thank our members for their participation in projects, attendance at meetings and for sharing their thoughts throughout the year. I would also like to thank the BPS staff, who have worked tirelessly in what was a busy and challenging year. I look forward to working with you all throughout my Presidency, and encourage members from all career levels to get in touch and tell us what they would like to see the BPS do next.
Progressing our pharmacology priorities
Strengthening the foundations of clinical pharmacology
The restructuring and subsequent changes to staff in the latter quarter of 2023 impacted our ability to drive work to sustain the clinical pharmacology specialty forward. Despite this, the Clinical Committee led by Professor Reecha Sofat (VP Clinical) and Speciality Registrar Sub-Committee, led by Dr Elizabeth Adeyeye organised the National Clinical Pharmacology Training for Specialty Registrars. This meant that the workforce was supported through topical monthly training sessions.
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In 2023 an independent review of the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) was completed. The PSA is a prescribing exam taken by final year medical students and UK Foundation Year One doctors. The independent review was commissioned jointly by Medical Schools Council and BPS and chaired by Professor Dame Jane Dacre. The purpose of the review was to understand how the assessment has impacted prescribing education and practice for candidates, and how best practice could be applied to the PSA’s governance and sustainability models. The report is a comprehensive analysis of the test, its many benefits, and areas for improvement and evolution.
Patient safety achieved through safe prescribing is of the utmost importance to the BPS. The PSA improves prescribing competence and education and in the future, as recommended, the PSA should be a summative exam taken by all final year medical students. Because this recommendation would require a shift in medical education nationally, a parallel study was undertaken to put all the exam information provided to the Dacre review into the public domain. This was published in the Society’s journal, the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, in November 2023 and the study supported the Dacre recommendations. Through our work with the MSC the Society will continue to explore implementing the recommendations so that safe prescribing remains of top priority in the medical community.
Bringing the pharmacological community together
Following the challenges posed throughout the pandemic and changes to audience behaviour in 2022, the Society committed to a review of how it delivered an innovative and engaging events programme for its members and the wider pharmacology community. A working group, chaired by Professor Cherry Wainwright (VP Meetings) delivered their recommendations to Council in September 2023. We are aiming to host approximately 30 events throughout 2024 and planning for this revamped scheduled occurred in the latter stages of the year.
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Building off the success of the World Congress, the Society committed to running a programme of events that is affordable for its membership, attracts symposia from global leaders across the full spectrum of drug discovery, development and use of medicines and engages a wide range of partners and sponsors to build the impact of the meetings and diversify our income overall.
In 2023, we worked across disciplines and international boundaries to co-deliver symposia and meetings with AstraZeneca, the British Toxicology Society, ASPET, ELRIG, EPHAR and EACPT. We hope to expand these opportunities further in 2024 and beyond. In addition, the Society was pleased to take on the leadership and management of the UK Pharmacogenetics & Stratified Medicine Network (UK PGx) in August 2023. This collaboration marks the continued growth of UK PGx since its launch in 2010 and aligns with the Society’s scientific priorities in promoting personalised and precision medicine. By taking on leadership of the Network, the BPS will be able to help manage the larger membership and support further development of opportunities and collaborations.
Thematic priorities
Although there were significant changes to our policy approach in 2023, we did co-author a policy briefing with the Academy of Medical Sciences to inform an upcoming debate in Parliament on access to psilocybin treatments. We published a statement welcoming the O'Shaughnessy review and its recommendations and the emphasis it placed on the importance of clinical research in the NHS. Throughout the year we published eight Pharmacology Matters articles and a blog that centred on inclusion in Pharmacology.
Our focus in 2024 will be to expand our work to engage members, the wider pharmacology community and the public in the areas that matter to us, through the identification of core scientific and campaign priorities and through a new content strategy. This will be led through the governance structures of the Society and informed by topical and emerging themes identified through our publishing processes and Member recommendations from our events and content board.
Disseminating cutting edge science
2023 was dominated by the delivery of the World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, a global Congress hosted by the BPS on behalf of IUPHAR. This Congress was originally won in a competitive bid in 2014 and preparations have been ongoing for nearly a decade. The event, originally scheduled for 2022 was postponed to 2023 to account for the difficulties in travel that many were still encountering in 2021 and 2022 due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Congress was widely regarded as a success, with a stellar scientific programme, 2,000 delegates from over 70 countries and over 1,200 posters presented, and 120 oral communications included in the programme. We aimed to leave a legacy of public understanding of the use and benefits of drugs and medicines in Scotland post event. A critical component was the delivery of three engagement events, a Café Scientifique, Pharma-Comedy (a standup comedy show fronted by members of the pharmacology community!) and an event to celebrate the first use of penicillin.
Celebrating and connecting our community
Education, training and engagement
Key deliverables in the education space in 2023 included supporting a successful IUPHAR Education satellite meeting ahead of the World Congress, and several webinars focused on creating learning sessions for educators and those involved in delivering and creating engagement activities. We also supported member-led symposia at partner meetings such as ELRIG’s Drug Discovery meeting, in Liverpool and ASPET’s Annual meeting in St Louis, USA.
Our Ambassadors volunteer their time to promote the benefits of BPS membership, encourage participation in engagement events and opportunities available through our grants, bursaries and awards. We are grateful for the time, effort and dedication from these volunteers. To ensure our Ambassadors have the right support, we reviewed their terms of reference and discussed how support can be adapted to expand the scheme to more members, building connectivity between members and the overall strategy.
Inclusion, equity and accessibility
The Society launched its Vision for EDI in 2021, and since then progress has been slow but steady. Throughout 2023, the focus was on ensuring all committees and groups identified an EDI lead and developed an action plan related to their work, including a diversity data plan. Through the CRM (contact relationship management system) we implemented a process to collect diversity data across all aspects of our work, for example in relation to election and nomination processes, registration for meetings etc. As diversity data is opt-in, we do not currently have data that is readily reportable due to reporting thresholds not being met. Throughout 2024, we intend to build a campaign into our normal data collection cycles to encourage participation and therefore build a stronger picture of how well we are doing against our EDI priorities.
Alongside seeking to build a culture of inclusion, belonging and equity within our membership we also committed to ensuring the Society is an inclusive and equitable employer. Following a staff survey in 2022 and the impact of the restructure in the middle of this financial year, the Executive worked with the Senior Leadership team to set a positive organisational culture and build a collaborative and creative workplace for all.
Embracing digital opportunities
The World Congress provided the best chance we had since the pandemic to capture video and photo content at a vibrant face-to-face meeting. The Marketing and Communications team made the most of this opportunity, working with a drone videographer to capture stunning shots of the conference and with a photography team to bank images for our social channels and publications. The team also conducted interviews with the CEO, President and Congress President and Secretary General to serve as a record of the Congress, but also to inspire the next generations of host countries. This content will also be used to populate the new BPS website, which is on track to launch by early 2025, and which the Marcomms team began to tender for suppliers for in 2023.
Sharing stories
Curating and connecting our community through our content is a key objective of the current strategy, regular content meetings has improved our commissioning processes internally and this has informed the development of a revised content strategy which will be implemented in 2024. The aim of this is to bring together all strands of the Society’s work, connecting our member’s stories and science to the broader thematic priorities and ensuring engaging content is produced for our platforms. This includes a review of our magazine Pharmacology Matters as the Society’s primary platform for sharing the science and stories that really matter to our members and broader community.
Sustaining our Society
Our publishing portfolio
Financial stability was a critical area of focus throughout 2023 but particularly in the first and second quarter. Publishing income continues to decline due to the impacts of Open Access (OA) on the financial return from all three of the Society’s journals. The Society had the opportunity to renegotiate its contract with its Publisher in 2021 and the decisions taken during this renegotiation will protect the Society from the true impact of the declining income base for at least 2023 to 2025.
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However, the Trustees expect this trend to continue as we progress towards another potential renegotiation point before the end of 2027. In preparation they undertook two significant activities in 2023; the formation of a publishing working group to explore opportunities to stabilise and expand the publishing portfolio and an operations and resourcing working group to stabilise and align the staffing structure to the current strategy framework. The operations and resourcing working group recommended actions to Council which were agreed and implemented in May and June 2023. This resulted in four individuals exiting the business - we thank them for all their contributions to the Society and its work.
The publishing working group reported its recommendations in June. These were informed by a survey shared with our members and the wider pharmacology community which sought to explore current and future publishing preferences and needs. The recommendations will be progressed throughout 2024. It is clear that the publishing landscape has changed and that OA, whilst an opportunity for science and the open sharing of scientific findings, will result in reduced income from publishing and the need for the Society to expand and diversify its income base.
BPS Assessment Ltd
BPS Assessment Limited (BPSA) remains a key element of the income diversification strategy and in 2023 sales grew by 16% on the 2022 outcome. This steady growth highlights that BPSA has developed a suite of online learning resources that help clinical professionals teach and learn safe and effective prescribing and these are being embedded into long-term teaching plans. This is further supported by the high (>90%) renewal rates of customers. The outcome of the independent review of the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) offers further opportunities to embed BPSA products on a global stage, as this review provided recent evidence of the effectiveness of the UK PSA and therefore the blueprint on which BPSA products are based.
Our environmental, social and governance goals
In 2023 the Society had committed to progressing its environmental principles by conducting a sustainability audit. This objective was paused due to the increased resource requirements of the World Congress and the impact of the structural changes to the organisation mid-year. It has been reviewed and reframed for progress in 2024, as ensuring the Society contributes positively to the fight against climate disaster remains a priority to the Trustees. That said, in 2023 we did conduct a review of the investment policy ensuring ESG principles were embedded into the investment policy and worked with venues and suppliers to improve our environmental footprint wherever possible, especially in relation to the hosting of events and meetings.
Financial statements
Download a PDF of the British Pharmacological Society’s financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2023.
Download a PDF of the British Pharmacological Society’s financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2023. The financial statements include the Financial Review, Statement of Financial Activities and Balance Sheet, together with the Notes to the Accounts. They show the overall financial performance of the Society and provide an analysis of the incoming resources and how they were applied in the performance of the Society’s objectives.
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Total Funds
The financial performance reported is of the “Group”, which means the Society together with its two trading subsidiaries, BPS Assessment Limited and BPS Trading Services Limited.
The total funds of the Group decreased by £85,521 and the resulting balance of total funds at 31 December 2023 amounted to £5,707,276.
Income
Income for the year totalled £5,346,500 which is a increase of 24.7% over 2022.
Charitable activity income from journal publishing, which is the Society's main income source, decreased by 6.4% to £3,203,872.
Member numbers decreased by 4.2% to 4,270 and membership subscription income decreased by 5.9% to £110,306. The decrease in numbers is primarily attributable to a decrease in the number of Early Career Members not continuing after Undergraduate membership, for which there is no charge.
Scientific meetings income increased by £1,264,846 to £1,387,866 due to WCP2023.
Income from educational activities came to £530,030 which is an increase of £231,219.
Investment income was £19,909 higher at £106,604 due to more favourable market conditions.
Expenditure
Expenditure on charitable activities totalled £5,590,386 which is a 22.3% increase of £1,019,894 mostly attributable to WCP20233.
Journal publishing costs increased by £53,954 to £1,499,729 reflecting increased Society staffing and publication support costs.
Educational activities at £1,714,454 was a 2.5% decrease of £43,910 over the previous year.
Projects and awards at £196,664 was a 2.6% decrease of £5,186 over the previous year.
Scientific meetings at £2,028,008 was a 118.2% increase due to WCP.
Capital expenditure totalled £11,834 of which £51K was for further enhancements to the new contact relationship management (CRM) system which went live on 30 September 2022.
