The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7256 p30
5 July 2003

Society summary

Guidance on legal status of medicines now available from online database

Up-to-date guidance on the legal status of thousands of human medicines is now available from a searchable live database on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's website.

Until now the guidance has appeared only as an alphabetical list within the annual 'Medicines, ethics and practice: a guide for pharmacists', supplemented by a monthly cumulative list of amendments in The Pharmaceutical Journal. The new database is to be found here.

The database can be searched by keying in a drug or product name, when it offers a list of entries containing that name. A partial name may also be used — for example, a search for "cane" produces a list of 18 products in the Canesten range, plus Hemocane and Lanocane.

The database can also be searched by legal classification. For example, choosing the "CD POM" option produces a 33-page list of all medicines subject to full Controlled Drug requirements.

Where a drug substance appears on the prescription only medicines list but with exceptions from the POM classification in certain circumstances, a search will produce two consecutive entries, one giving the basic classification and the other listing the exceptions. The complex entries for aspirin and paracetamol exceptions also have links to the summary tables, as found in the printed guide.

The database has been used for compiling the information on the legal classification of human medicines in the new 27th edition of 'Medicines, ethics and practice'.

Shona Coy, the Society's senior pharmacist administrator, whose team maintains the database, said: "The database is an easy-to-use live version of the 'Alphabetical list of medicines for human use' in MEP and will be updated regularly, giving web users information that is more up to date than that contained in the printed list."