Part 1: How healthcare professionals can access the latest and most accurate information on medications
Access to accurate,
up-to-date information on medications helps healthcare professionals make
better decisions. Before prescribing or dispensing a drug, it’s essential to
have some insight into its behaviors — desired effect, required storage
conditions, potential off-target effects, drug–drug interactions and so on.
Physicians, nurse practitioners and pharmacy staff members demonstrate an
incredible knowledge of drugs, built up through many years of point-of-care
experience. This knowledge informs their clinical decisions.
However, there is a
constant stream of information about new medical products as well as updates
about existing ones. How can healthcare professionals stay current without
spending a significant amount of time and effort on learning all this new
information?
This new blog series
looks at how healthcare professionals can easily obtain answers about
medications. In this post, we will focus on the evolving role that
pharmaceutical manufacturers play in supporting the medical community.
Pharmaceutical
manufacturers carefully manage robust scientific and clinical information about
their products. Each drug amasses a rich pool of knowledge during development
and beyond. Preclinical and clinical trial data, patient information labels,
and pharmacovigilance reports are curated by medical information teams. Understandably,
they play an important part in maintaining internal access the company’s
knowledge base.
Interestingly, these experts
also have a very significant role within the broader healthcare community. When
requested, they share published and unpublished internal information with healthcare
professionals who prescribe, dispense and manage medicine. By delivering
current and accurate answers to medical queries, they can have a positive and
enduring impact on patient care.
Medical information
teams can help healthcare professionals in many ways. Beyond simply answering
questions on a product’s properties and effects, they can also perform expert
interpretation. For example, if there was a point-of-care decision that
required delving into the clinical trial data, having their support would be
essential.
As technology has developed, many pharmaceutical manufacturers have investigated ways to provide healthcare professionals with quicker and more direct access to drug information. The Pharma Collaboration for Transparent Medical Information
(phactMI) is one such undertaking. This non-profit collaboration of pharmaceutical company medical information leaders aims to be the primary source for evidence-based drug information. It currently enables searches of over 3,000 product labels and associated medical information responses.
Surprisingly, around
40% of healthcare professionals are not aware that pharmaceutical manufacturers
have medical information departments. Even fewer are aware of organizations
like phactMI, which means they are not taking advantage of this incredible
resource.
Here’s an anonymized
example of how drug information services can help. A patient had a long-term
condition, but their current medication was not having the desired impact.
Their physician contacted drug information services, who were able to support
the physician with suggestions for a new medication and possible dosages. After
moving to the new medication, the patient showed considerable improvement:
symptoms were brought under control at last.
Everyone involved on
the treatment team should know that they can easily obtain more information
about pharmaceutical products. Ultimately, phactMI and healthcare professionals
have the same goal: better-informed decisions that can help improve patient
outcomes.
Next time, we will
investigate some of the challenges that healthcare professionals face when it
comes to obtaining information about medications.
Part 2 of this blog series will be published in 2 weeks.
