Medication Updates Electronically Sent to Clinicians
iHealth Alliance is developing a new website to provide clinicians with updated changes about pharmaceuticals, including alerts related to drug safety. The launch of the new site was posted by IHealthBeat. Physicians will have access to the site free of charge.
The system will be supported with funds from pharmaceutical companies. Each will pay to be able to use the Health Care Notification Network. The site will not include any promotional or marketing materials. The report notes that another potential use of the system is mass notifications about events such as bioterrorism threats or public health emergencies.
Physicians will receive emails within two months that contain instructions about how the website will function. Emails will focus on the disease specialties practiced by clinicians. An additional feature of the system will allow clinicians to provide both pharmaceutical companies and the FDA with information about medication reactions. As well, the site will store information about the physicians who review the varied notifications; those will be archived for a yearlong period.
The current practice by which most clinicians receive notification about changes to different medications is through the regular mail. Many doctors have said that they throw these out rather than reviewing the information contained within. As of 2006, the FDA issued a requirement that pharmaceutical companies email safety notifications to clinicians.
The Alliance was created by the company Medem. The company announced that five different pharmaceutical companies are reviewing contracts to participate in the website. Two companies that have announced intentions to participate include GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.
March 28, 2008 Related topics: Trends, Partnerships & Consortia, Quality, Safety, Errors