Abstract
Updating drug information was simplified and the issuance period shortened for our hospital formulary developed using a commercially available package-insert drug information database. Recently, Local area network (LAN) system has been improved. So we developed a new World Wide Wed (WWW) edition of the hospital formulary based on the same drug information database so it can be accessed by every client terminal in the university. The drug information database was extracted from a CD-ROM by the syllabary order and the order of the pharmacological category to create index files. The text and index files were converted to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) using the text processing software Jgawk. Original drug information created by the hospital pharmacy as DI NEWS, including drug interactions and adverse reactions, were also converted to HTML and linked to the drug in the text.
This formulary was written in HTML, therefore, any kind of client terminal can access this new WWW edition of our hospital formulary on line. Previously, at least 2-3 months were needed to publish a new hospital formulary, however it could be completed within one day by extracting information from a CD-ROM and creating a new edition of the hospital formulary on the WWW server.
