The British drug information service

This paper describes the type of drug information service available in the UK, its scope, limitations and possible future development. A survey was carried out in which information pharmacists in the sixteen major drug information centres in the UK were interviewed. All centres have access to a large number of information resources and, in addition, have developed a resource which reduces the delay before published information is retrievable from their own system. Some centres receive large numbers of enquiries and have little time for active dissemination of information whilst other centres with few enquiries actively disseminate information to hospital staff. Some centres send bulletins to general practitioners, retail pharmacists and community nurses. Most information pharmacists refer enquiries concerning drug therapy in patients with which they may have difficulties to clinical pharmacologists or other medically qualified personnel. General practitioners use drug information services less often than hospital doctors. Most information pharmacists plan to extend their services to medical and paramedical staff in the community. In the future, information pharmacists plan to use improved technology to provide a more efficient service, open for longer hours, provide clinical opinion with the help of clinical pharmacologists and increase the functions of drug information centres (e.g. adverse drug reaction monitoring).