Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

Excellent idea - some doctors do prescribe conflicting medicines, as one of my family members found out. Some pharmacies run a checking system (Boots?) but it would be great to make the info available online in an easy-to-use way.

This sort of query should be referred to your phamacist. Any discussion you have is confidential, if you're concerned about privacy then you can contact any pharmacist either in person or by telephone.

The nature of medicine being such that information is changing frequently as we learn more about medicines and their interactions means that an electronic system you described would be very costly to implement. This is primarily because reputable information regarding drug interactions would need to be purchased from a third party that maintains such information.

I think that the idea is great. I also agree with both comments made. If we are talking in terms of patients information accessibility and patient safety, then cost of implementation should be secondary. Many patients take prescribed and non-prescribed medication concurrently. Not all pharmacists are conducting MURs (medicines use reviews) and to my knowledge they are not compulsory. Time and care needs to be taken by pharmacists who are soliciting and giving information about medicines and their interactions. It would be more than useful for patients to be able to exercise their preference by accessing information about drug interactions electronically or alternatively by approaching their pharmacist - if the opportunity is available to them.

free drug information programs for professionals as well as for patients would enhance security of drug treatments. It would be great if an organisation would sponsor such a program (heading myself such a program, in german only... because of lack of funding, a good accurate drug information program needs lots of personal ressources)