Out of Five Stars

High quality content  *****
Up to date  *****
Good presentation  ****
Level of unfettered access  ****
Useful patient information  *****
Interactive CME  ***

Website : www.medsafe.govt.nz

A recent peer group meeting reminded me of the importance of having up-to-date and reasonably detailed prescribing information on many of the medicines we use.

On this occasion we were discussing how we as "new pre--scribers" were going to approach the new access to tretinoin (Isotane, Oratane, Roaccutane) in the current and somewhat more liberal prescribing and funding era.

Users of most practice PC-based management systems probably have access to the Medsafe medicines data sheets. For example, MedTech has a Medsafe link to most products on its prescribing link (F10) though, in these cases, the link is not internet enabled but rather accesses static data held on the practice server - presumably provided as a value-added service from MIMS.

And, while it may be great to have this information so conveniently at our fingertips, sometimes it may also be helpful to have a direct web link to the more up-to-date and authoritative Medsafe data sheet repository where data sheet updates can occur as often as fortnightly. The link can also be added to our IE or Firefox toolbar if we have enough space: www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/DSForm.asp

For those of us a little unfamiliar with our relevant governmental authorities, Medsafe is the New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority and is a separate arm (indeed a business unit) of the Ministry of Health and is charged with regulating therapeutic products in New Zealand.

For completeness we should also be aware of its mission statement, ie, "To enhance the health of New Zealanders by regulating medicines and medical devices to maximise safety and benefit."

The website at Medsafe probably began embryonically about 10 years ago, and indeed I personally recall talking to Susan Martindale (then with Medsafe) about how they should go about setting up their site. They were keen to try and cut down on their mailing and printing and could certainly see the advantages of maintaining their archives on the site.

I feel they have done a very good job and we should probably all visit the archived Prescriber Update articles from time to time, if merely as a reminder of some of the issues which affect us as prescribers and often have a tendency to come to our notice in the local newspapers before we get to see or hear anything official.

The most recent and, perhaps, most irritating of all had related to the various brands of thyroxine and the associated bioavailability and "adverse reaction" issues. In fact, the latest Eltroxin Prescriber Update is quite recent from just several weeks ago.

The Prescriber Update articles go back over 10 years and total 120 in all. They are indexed alphabetically on the generic drug or subject names but can also be accessed via an internal search engine.

For those not familiar with the medicines data sheets, they are very detailed - usually four to eight pages - and can give some very good and in-depth prescribing guidance. The data sheets are prepared by the supplier companies but are closely vetted by ministry officials and scientists.

For those of us old enough to remember the New Ethicals compendium about eight years ago (which was a similar collection but in print), one can certainly appreciate the value of an online version which is regularly updated.

The Medsafe umbrella site is divided into basic sections: consumers, health professionals, regulatory and miscellaneous.
In the consumer section there is an emphasis on over-the-counter (OTC) products, eg, consumer medicines infor-mation on such products, consumer-patient information leaflets, pharmacy only medicines and a range of informational pages for consumers relating to the safe use of medicines, reporting side effects, importing medicines and travel medicine.

In the health professionals section and, in addition to the prescriber updates and medicine data sheets, there are sections dealing with consumer medicines, the classification of medicines (including 10 years of archives of the Medicines Classification Committee or MCC), adverse reaction reporting and IMMP, and a number of miscellaneous topics (unapproved medicines, interchangeable medicines, drug abuse issues, clinical trials and other regulatory issues).

The regulatory section also covers work and minutes of both the MCC and the Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC), gazette notices, pharmacovigilance, medical devices, complementary medicines, med-icines advertising and a range of other regulatory issues relating more to the pharmaceutical and health products industries then to ourselves.

There is also a hot topics section which contains some issues such as the complementary medicines debate, the Trans Tasman Agency Project (politically torpedoed by the complementary medicines lobby), oral contraception and HRT, MeNZB and Eltroxin, and media releases.

Overall, the site is easy to use and very informative, and I would certainly recommend readers consider adding the link to the medicines data sheets to their desktop toolbars.