Clinical Drug Information System

Abstract

Knowledge which will influence someone upon his decision making is "information"for him. Physicians have to make their decision when they prescribe medicines or give orders for injections. Recently highlevel activities for accurate selection of information are indispensable, as a result of increases in the volume and complications of the quality of drug-related information. The drug information provided by hospital pharmacists for the past 20 years has been successful, but does not always satisfy physicians, according to the substantial difference in approaches to drug information between physicians and pharmacists. I considered if a computer will be able to fill the gap. In 1980 we developed and reported in the field of medical informatics, a system for automatically checking prescriptions, an automatic dispensing apparatus, and a series of system for the administration of consumption and stock of drugs, and their automatic order execution. We have further continued to investigate database architecture to incorporate all pharmaceuticals in the NIH Price List (ca. 16 000), the data being classified into 33 items and retrievable from 14 items. I would like to introduce another plan for automatic data supply service being developed in our center. The full texts have been input of package inserts for all pharmaceuticals currently on the japanese marker (ca. 30 000) using the TOSfile 3200 optical disk system, so that comprehensive drug information is available on a 24-h basis to medical or pharmaceutical professionals throughout Japan by facsimile transmission.