Primary Care Pharmacy March 2000 Vol 1 No 2 p48-49
Making the most of the net
By Simon Whitaker, BPharm, MRPharmS
An overview of the world wide web and the facilities that it offers to pharmacists
When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the world wide web. Now even my cat has its own page." - Bill Clinton, 1996.
The internet is everywhere. Over the past five or six years, it has changed from being a minority concern, appealing only to technically adept computer enthusiasts, to being a ubiquitous, global communications phenomenon the likes of which we have never seen before. In Britain, a number of significant developments since the mid-1990s - most notably the launch of Freeserve, the UK's first free internet service provider, in September, 1998 - have served to increase the use of the internet beyond all expectation. For businesses, an internet connection is becoming as much an essential requirement as a fax machine, and recent estimates suggest that one in five British households now has access to the internet. Gaining access to the system has never been easier, with everyone from banks to book shops offering their own access services. Clearly, ignoring the internet is no longer an option.
It is a modern-day truism that we are an information society. In a fast-paced world, the ability to access up-to-date and relevant information is vital, and communication is the means by which it is accessed.
It is worth taking note of the distinction between information and communication. The internet is an excellent communication tool - fast, cheap, flexible and effective.
However, it is not possible to say that the information it contains is of a consistently high quality. The world wide web, in particular, is a vast repository of data and one in which anyone can publish but the quality of that information is sometimes difficult to assess.
Pharmacy related websites
Fortunately, as more pharmacists become active users of the internet, the incentive to provide quality data targeted at pharmacists has also increased and there are now a number of web sites offering high-quality, relevant and up-to-date information. An excellent example is Drug Info Zone, (http://www.druginfozone.org/), a web site maintained by Dr Shapour Hariri at the London, South East and Eastern Drug Information Service. The Drug Info Zone team spend hours each day scouring various news sources from around the globe and publish the most relevant stories on their web site. The site also includes a "One Stop Reference Shop", a continuously updated publication, where a number of reference sources (including the world wide web) are screened for independent, evidence-based drug-related reviews. These references are then indexed in BNF categories.
A plethora of medical and pharmaceutical journals are available on-line, with The Pharmaceutical Journal (http://www.pharmj.com/), the British Medical Journal (http://www.bmj.com/), the Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/) and many others having their own web sites. Of these, the BMJ site is arguably the most useful. the full text of every article published in the journal since January, 1994, is archived on-line, plus additional content, which is unique to the on-line version. The site also offers access to MEDLINE, on-line discussions and "customised @lerts", a service which lets readers know by e-mail when the site has new content of interest.
E-mail mailing lists are another popular method of communication via the internet. They are virtual discussion groups that allow a number of people to contribute to a discussion using nothing more complicated than e-mail - a resource that every internet user has readily to hand. Such groups offer a way of keeping in contact with others working in the same field and, thus, can be a source of encouragement and support. In emerging disciplines like primary care pharmacy, the benefits of being in immediate contact with peers, irrespective of their geographical location, should be apparent. Popular mailing lists of relevance to pharmacists include those housed at Private-Rx (http://www.private-rx.net/) and GP-UK (http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/gp-uk/) a mailing list predominantly for general practitioners (GPs) in the UK but open to all.
A personal view
In an effort to gauge the relevance of the internet to practising primary care pharmacists, I spoke to Michelle Johnson, a primary care pharmacist working for Primary Care Group Ltd. When asked whether the internet had had any effect on her working life, she told me that it had revolutionised the way in which she worked:
"The magnitude of the internet's impact is such that I could not contemplate delivering the service I do now without it. The wealth of evidence and information published on the internet enables me to answer in minutes queries that previously took hours or even days of manual searching.
"In addition to the information I extract from the web on a daily basis, e-mail enables me to maintain regular contact with other pharmacists and health care professionals in a way not possible by 'phone, fax or in person.
"As a member of two professional discussion forums (one pharmacist-based, the other GP-based), I find debating health care issues an invaluable aid to maintaining a wider view of certain aspects of my own work. I am fortunate now to work for a company that gives me considerable peer support but I still appreciate the sense of community engendered by such forums."
While the internet may offer exciting new communication opportunities, the services that are currently available are just the tip of the iceberg. The technology driving the internet is developing at break-neck speed and even greater advances are just around the corner. The advent of affordable, high-speed, permanent internet connections will revolutionise the way in which we use the internet, making services such as on-line video-conferencing a reality. In addition, the forthcoming third-generation mobile telephone network will offer high-speed internet access from portable, hand-held devices.
Links to relevant websites
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) web site (http://www.nice.org.uk/) includes sections on clinical guidelines, clinical audit, and a searchable database of published and "grey" literature on quality improvement and related subjects.
The Cochrane library (http://www.update-software.com/cochrane.htm) is an electronic publication designed to supply high quality evidence to inform those people providing and receiving care, and those responsible for research, teaching, funding and administration at all levels.
The National Prescribing Centre site (http://www.npc.co.uk/) contains some useful information about the NPC and what they do, plus links to other sites of interest.