About this toolkit

Scottish Government Effective Prescribing & Therapeutics Division epandt@gov.scot 

Content has been checked for accessibility in line with the relevant RDS standard operating procedures.

The app is compliant with Android and Apple accessibility standards for native mobile apps. The website is compliant with WC3A 2.0 standards.

The guidance was developed with an expert short life working group comprising representatives from Scottish Government, NHS Scotland, third sector, patient groups and experts by experience.

The draft of this guidance was published for public consultation in summer 2025 and following review, the final guidance was agreed by the group and signed off by the Head of Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics on 6 January 2026.

This guidance was co-signed by the Chief Medical Officer.

Authors

• Polypharmacy Guidance Short Life Working Group
• Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics – Scottish Government

Review and sign-off of content at time of initial publication

Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics led on the development of the content for the toolkit, convening the working group, and will be responsible for content review and maintenance with the Head of Division providing lead responsibility and sign-off.

Proposing updates and signing off proposals for updates to the content after initial publication, outwith the scheduled review dates

Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics staff and clinical experts will review requests for amendments, consulting with the relevant stakeholders who contributed to the development of the guidance where appropriate.

Determining the review date(s) for content

Prescribing guidance is usually written from the viewpoint of being relevant and applicable for at least three years. Therefore the review date for content will be three years.

Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics will convene a Short Life Working Group (SLWG) when the guidance is due for review.

The head of Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics would sign off any updated content.

Content in this toolkit is copyrighted to Scottish Government and its partners unless otherwise stated where agreement to reproduce has been obtained, and the relevant credit and acknowledgement information is included.

Icons are sourced from Flaticon.com, accessed through the licence held by Tactuum Ltd as software provider of the RDS platform. 

Due to the extensive scope of the Polypharmacy Guidance, a rapid guideline development approach, adapted from SIGN guideline development methodology as set out in the 2019 edition of SIGN 50: a guideline developers handbook, was used to derive evidence summaries and evidence-informed recommendations. This adopted an overview of systematic reviews (SR) and guidelines (GL), to accelerate the efficient and reliable synthesis of the evidence base.

Full details are provided in Methods for deriving evidence-based guidance.

Emails for app enquiries or feedback are available in the "Key contacts" section above.

Messages received through the RDS feedback form will be forwarded by the RDS team to the key contacts.

The content has been risk assessed:

• Potential Risk - Guidance no longer current. In consequence, content may be out of date and staff do not get optimal guidance.
• Mitigation – Guidance is usually written from the viewpoint of being relevant and applicable for at least three years. Therefore review date for guidance content will be three years.

Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics staff have responsibility for checking/testing all toolkit content.

User testing has been conducted to assure usability, navigation, readability, and appropriate formatting.