To improve the drug information service and standardize pharmaceutical care for inpatients of the Department of Japanese Oriental Medicine, Toyama University Hospital, we created a Kampo (Oriental) medicine database and used it in the preparation of medication instruction sheets. The database was configured on a Power Mac G4 (Apple Computer, Inc. ; Cupertino, CA, USA) personal computer operating on Mac OS 10.4 using FileMaker Pro 6 database software. The database comprised 5 interlinked files-patient registration file, constituent crude drug registration file, Kampo formula registration file, and a file for the making and storing of instruction sheets. Information on 239 crude drugs and 560 Kampo formulae obtained from our “Hospital Manual for Japanese Oriental Medicine” was recorded in the database. Further, color photographs of the plants from which the herbal medicines were derived and other natural medicines were included in the instruction sheets to give patients a better understanding of Kampo pharmacotherapy. The database has made it easy to prepare personalized instruction sheets, which can be done by only entering the patient's ID and the Kampo formulae prescribed or crude drug name. In addition, the medication instructions for each inpatient and the indication(s) of prescribed Kampo formulae have been recorded in the database for later use in the management of inpatient histories and to provide utilization statistics for Kampo medicines.
When a questionnaire survey of inpatients of the Department of Japanese Oriental Medicine was carried out to evaluate the usefulness of the medication instruction sheets prepared using the database, it was found that they gave patients a better understanding of Kampo pharmacotherapy and made them more interested in it. In conclusion, our database system will help improve the drug information service and quality of pharmaceutical care for inpatients treated with Kampo formulae prepared from crude drugs.
