Medical Education

One of our major on-going programs at Lifeblood is the SPHERE project.

‘SPHERE: a national mental health project’ aims to assist GPs, Mental Health professionals and the Community in dealing with the identification, treatment and management of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety and physical pain.

SPHERE has been operating for over 8 years and, in this time, over 40% of Australian general practitioners have participated in the program.

In 2001 Pfizer Australia joined SPHERE as an implementation partner. This partnership saw the SPHERE project offered to all Australian GPs. Through the implementation of the SPHERE training modules, the Pfizer sales team gained regular, unprecedented access to these key GPs, who had significant interest in mental health. This activity assisted in restoring the market share and growth of the Pfizer antidepressant Zoloft®, restoring it to the Number One product in this market.