The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7323 p636
30 October 2004

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All POMs to have medicine guides

Up to 2,000 medicine guides will be produced between now and 2007 by the Medicines Information Project, a partnership involving the NHS, the Department of Health, the pharmaceutical industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, patients and health care professionals. The medicines guides will be available online initially (at www.medicines.org.uk), though release in other channels is planned, Joanne Shaw, director of the Medicines Partnership, said at a media briefing.

Eventually there will be a guide for every prescription only medicine. The pharmaceutical industry has committed to funding 3,000 medicine guides, covering all prescription only medicines. Medicines guides provide a user-friendly complement to the patient information leaflet and are designed to be available before a medicine is prescribed.

Patients will also be directed to the information that is relevant to their particular condition, rather than that covering all patients. Information on medical conditions and treatment options on NHS Direct Online links through to the medicine guides, which themselves link through to patient information leaflets, summaries of product characteristics and patient group websites. So far, 64 guides in two conditions (epilepsy and influenza) have been launched; 27 guides for hyperlipidaemia will be available from 1 November.