Canadian-headquartered Tilray Brands, Inc. says it is expanding its medical cannabis product offerings for patients and related education for health professionals in Australia.
Accessible via Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) Special Access Scheme and Authorized Prescriber Scheme (where individual applications are approved), whole flower options including 1:1 (THC 10 CBD 10), mid-range (17), and high THC (25) varieties of 15g bag GMP-Certified medical cannabis will be made available. Previously, only cannabis extract products such as cannabidiol (CBD) were available to Australian patients.
“After listening to patient feedback and leveraging learnings from our operations in Germany, we are excited to be introducing new products in Australia that meet consumer needs,” said Denise Faltischek, Head of International and Chief Strategy Officer.
Additionally, the company has also launched a new medical cannabis educational platform for Australian and New Zealand healthcare professionals.
“On a related note, cannabis education is paramount to everything we do and are therefore excited to offer healthcare professionals with the tools they need to learn about cannabis through our new e-learning platform,” stated Tilray Australia and New Zealand General Manager George Polimenakos.
Tilray is running a number of online workshops this year titled “Practical Skills in Prescribing Medicinal Cannabis” that discuss:
- therapeutic properties of medicinal cannabis
- treatment considerations, dosing and titration
- evaluating clinical application in General Practice
- patient management and legislation
- adverse and therapeutic effects
There are also a couple of self-paced courses available, “Essential Medicinal Cannabis Prescriber ” and “Pharmacist’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis”.
All courses and workshops are free and provided via Medihuanna; an accredited education provider. Founder of Medihuanna, Dr. Teresa Towpik, was one of the first clinicians to prescribe medicinal cannabis in Australia.
Tilray said the workshops had educated hundreds of health care practitioners in Australia and New Zealand in 2021.
Tilray has been on the Australian scene for quite some time – since at least since 2017 when twenty-nine Victorian children with very serious intractable epilepsy received a Tilray cannabidiol-based oral solution. The company has also been involved with other local research including the development of a novel treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and a study led by the University of Sydney examining the effects of driving under the influence of cannabis.
