Drug information services: initial experiences in Dresden.

Abstract

The plethora of new drugs has led to a growing demand for optimal quality and cost-e€ectiveness in drug therapy. A fundamental need has arisen for systems which can provide physicians with relevant information about the safe, e€ective and economical use of drugs. Clinical pharmacologists have a key role in providing independent, unbiased information. Although drug information centres (DICs) were established in Europe some two decades ago, only a few have been created in Germany [1±6]. Currently, eight Departments of Clinical Pharmacology (Hannover, Dresden, Jena, Leipzig, Rostock, Wuppertal, Stuttgart and Bremen) provide drug information for physicians. These regional DICs work independently of one another, and are run by clinical pharmacologists. An additional service exists, which is exclusively managed by pharmacists located in Frankfurt am Main [6, 7]. Our recently established DIC in Dresden is a regional centre, which o€ers services to primary health care (PHC) physicians and hospital clinicians. In this Letter to the Editors we report the results of the ®rst 18 months of service. The Institute of Clinical Pharmacology of the University of Technology in Dresden established a DIC in October 1995. The telephone service is organized by clinical pharmacologists and advertised regionally. Requests are answered both by telephone and in writing. Standardized documentation and evaluation forms are sent to the enquirer. The information given is based mainly on the international drug databases Drugdex, Martindale and Reprorisk (CCSI-Micromedex, Englewood, N. J.) and the bibliographical database Medline. Medline is used in about half of the enquiries. A core collection of journals is readily available at the local medical library, but it takes often a long time to order copies of original articles published in journals which are not available in Dresden. A total of 200 enquiries were received during the ®rst 18 months. The majority of questions concerned adverse drug reactions (32%) and problems involving the therapeutic use of drugs (28%; Table 1). Cardiovascular drugs (21% of queries), systemic anti-infectives (19%) and drugs acting on the central nervous system (14%) were the principal drug groups for consultation. On average, the processing of a query required about 1.5 to 2 h. Approximately 98% of enquiries were answered by written reports containing relevant original bibliographical citations and the most conclusive recommendations possible. The majority of queries came from PHC physicians (52%) and from clinicians (43%). A pro®le of users is presented in Table 1. One hundred and thirteen evaluation forms were returned (56% of all forms sent). According to the responses in the questionnaires, 97% of the physicians who used our service were either `satis®ed' or `very satis®ed' with the quality of our answers. The experience of our DIC in its ®rst 18 months corresponds broadly to those of other well-established European DICs [2, 4, 8±10], although the total number of our enquiries is still relatively small. In keeping with other centres [2, 4, 10], systemic antibiotics, cardiovascular drugs and drugs acting on the central nervous system were among the drug classes which received the most enquiries. The percentage of enquiries about adverse drug reactions and therapeutic use at our DIC was also in line with the statistics at many centres [3, 4, 11]. Our DIC will become part of a national network with the primary goal of supporting the initiation of DICs in Eur J Clin Pharmacol (1998) 54: 667±668 O Springer-Verlag 1998