Barriers To Accessing Vital Drug Information

Pharmaceutical drugs have become a key part of caring for patients, whether it’s treating rare diseases or easing everyday maladies. However, the effects of a drug will vary for each patient and the side effects they may cause could worsen their conditions. For this reason, drug manufacturers document the effects of their drugs. The longer that a drug is on the market, the more its manufacturer might learn about its effects. This information is critical for medical professionals to prescribe drugs wisely and treat patients. Unfortunately, access to this information is not always easy, and there is a need for improving the methods of access for better healthcare.

Ensuring that a product is used safely and correctly is the obligation of any company. For pharmaceutical companies, helping healthcare professionals to prescribe and utilize a product for appropriate patients where, when, and for whom, presents the greatest chance of efficacy and lowest risk of adverse effects is a top priority. Despite the many series of tests that pharmaceuticals must go through to be released into the market, the effects of a drug are not fully known until the public starts using it as drugs react differently to every patient.

It is important for physicians to know how a drug reacts to certain treatments that a patient may undergo, such as how it may interact with other medications the patient may be taking. Healthcare professionals need the most comprehensive and current data on pharmaceutical products to support decisions in patient care. They also need to know about how information is produced and maintained by pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the reliable delivery of that information is the mandate of medical information divisions

Unfortunately, vital drug information is not always easy to find. As is observed in the case study?Making medical information easily accessible to healthcare professionals , there are often barriers to disseminating this information. Three common problems are:

1. ?Reliable, accurate information on the drug is stored on a company’s website in a way that is cumbersome or not intuitive to access. There are some sites are not regularly updated, both in terms of content and navigation. Finding the right information can be time-consuming and frustrating.
2. Online “drug compendia” websites are often easier to navigate but can be out-of-date or contain misinformation. Getting access to the information is easier, however that information may be incorrect. If healthcare professionals are unsure about where the information is from, they are less likely to use it for fear of making a mistake.
3. Healthcare providers might be under the misapprehension that the information on the pharmaceutical company’s site is promotional and therefore not necessarily accurate. It would be common sense to think that if a company’s product is performing poorly, ?they would hide the results, especially on their own information channels. This can create ?distrust between healthcare professionals and the companies producing the drugs.

There is clearly a need for action to be taken in order to reduce the barriers accessing information. Both healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical companies should be involved in the solution. One great initiative has been the establishment of the Pharma Collaboration for Transparent Medical Information (also known as?phactMI), a consortium of 30 pharma that includes major companies like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Gilead, GSK, Merck, Pfizer, and many more. ?PhactMI partnered with Elsevier to create a centralized medical information platform to support an easy-to-use online tool that enables healthcare professionals to find drug information quickly and easily when they need it by going to?phactMI.org . Powered by Entellect, the site allows them to do a simple search by product name or search term to easily locate the information they need.

If you are looking to dive deeper into the obstacles to information that healthcare professionals face or are interested in PhactMi, we invite you to read our Pharma blog .