In Japan, pharmacy education has just started a 6-year program in the university in 2006 for high-quality and advanced pharmacist training. The knowledge and skills of drug informatics is the basis of education in high-quality and advanced pharmacist training. The role that the pharmacist should play on the medical team can be easily stated, “Support of the drug therapy based on scientific evidence”. Drug informatics education is very important to help the student acquire such an ability. In this paper, we introduce the basic education in drug informatics (proposed plan) in a new curriculum in Kitasato University. The education related to drug informatics in the new curriculum consists of Drug Informatics 1 (Required: 1 unit) for 4
th-year students, Drug Informatics 2 (Elective: 0.5 units) and EBM Practice (Elective: 0.5 unit) for 6
th-year students. It is necessary to attend both Drug Informatics 2 and EBM Practice as a set. We lecture on basic information about information sources, collection, evaluation, processing, and management in Drug Informatics 1, and clinical research, epidemiologic studies, EBM, etc. in Drug Informatics 2, and bibliographic retrieval, critical reviews, clinical application, etc. in EBM practice. We introduced the content of drug informatics as part of the basic education at the university in new curriculum of six years in this field. We think that this education leads to not only training pharmacists who can practice EBM in clinical places like hospitals, drugstores, etc., but also a basic education for the training of personnel who can offer EBM in the government (healthcare administration) and pharmaceutical companies. However, these are only basic courses at university, and more advanced education will be needed.
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