Objective: In drug treatment for pregnant and lactating women, pharmacists need to contribute to adequate drug treatment by collecting much information from various sources. However, it takes much time to collect information using plural sources. In this study, we tried to develop a database system which enables expeditiously collecting the domestic and foreign drug use criteria information in order to streamline collecting information for pregnant and lactating women. In addition, we assessed the utility of the database by comparing the time to collect information using the database to that using each information source and the usability by questionnaires.
Methods: We developed a database system that integrates drug information from the FDA Pregnancy Category, Australian categories for prescribing medicines in pregnancy, “Drugs in Pregnancy & Lactation,” and Japanese package inserts. For assessment of the usability of the database, we assessed the time required to collect information and subjective evaluation using the five-method questionnaires.
Results: The database significantly reduced the time needed for collecting criteria information and made it possible to compile the information simultaneously from various sources. The questionnaire survey showed that over 80% of pharmacists and students were satisfied with the database.
Conclusion: It is suggested that our database system is useful to efficiently collect drug use criteria information for pregnant and lactating women.
