Prescribers and users of medicines

We are delighted to announce the publication in BMJ Global Health of our first systematic review: How primary healthcare workers obtain information during consultations to aid safe prescribing in low-income and lower middle-income countries.

CITATION: How primary healthcare workers obtain information during consultations to aid safe prescribing in low-income and lower middle-income countries: a systematic review. Chris Smith, Michelle Helena van Velthoven, Nguyen Duc Truong, Nguyen Hai Nam, V Phan Anh, Tareq Mohammed Ali AL-Ahda, Osama Gamal Hassan, Basel Kouz, Nguyen Tien Huy, Malcolm Brewster, Neil Pakenham-Walsh. BMJ Global Health 2020;5:e002094. Published on 2nd April 2020

This paper serves as a vital baseline assessment/situation analysis on which we can build future advocacy and action. There can be no area of health more important than access to reliable information to inform prescribing, no area of health that ios more perverted by commercial interests, and no area of health that presents such an important and growing existential threat to human existence - the predicted post-antibiotic apocalypse, with 50 million deaths per year, partly driven by lack of access to reliable informatioin on antibitics. 

The HIFA Prescribers and Users of Medicines project is seeking sponsorship to continue our work. Please contact the HIFA Coordinator, Neil Pakenham-Walsh: neil@hifa.org

Medicines Information for All
Improving the availability of information for prescribers and users of medicines worldwide
S. Cavanagh, East Anglia Medicines Information Service, C. Rodrigues University of Amsterdam, M. Brewster, Rye Medical Centre and N. Pakenham-Walsh, Healthcare Information for All

“Globally, many prescribers receive most of their prescribing information from the pharmaceutical industry and in many countries this is the only information they receive.” WHO Medicines Report 2011

The HIFA Project on Information for Prescribers and Users of Medicines is leading the HIFA community towards our shared goal: “a world where every prescriber and user of medicines will have access to independent, reliable, understandable information on the full range of commonly prescribed medicines - and will know where to find it.” 

The HIFA Working Group on Information for Prescribers and Users of Medicines has undertaken a limited review of the literature based on the following headings:

1. The information sources used for prescribing in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs); 
2. Information sources for consumers in LMICs;
3. How medicines information is accessed in LMICs; 
4. The consequences of prescribing with either no information or biased/inaccurate information; 
5. The benefits / usefulness of different sources of information on medicines; 
6. Practical aspects of compiling a drug formulary.

The HIFA working group on Information for Prescribers and Users of Medicines is undertaking a scoping review of literature on six themes relating to our shared vision (a world where every prescriber and user of medicines will have access to independent, reliable, understandable information on the full range of commonly prescribed medicines ­ and will know where to find  it).

The six themes are:

Over the past year we have searched Medline, Embase, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, and Google Scholar. We indentified over 1300 papers published in the last 5 years, but only 56 of these papers were relevant to the above themes. So, our first finding is that the evidence base for this area is very limited, given the huge importance of the subject. Please let us know if you are aware of any relevant research - especially from the last 5 years - that is not included on this list. Contact: admin@hifa.org