Online access to SPCs/PILs is essential to improve patient safety
Make all SPCs and PILs available online.
Preferably, this should not be on the MHRA website, which is already difficult to navigate and best searched with Google Advanced.
Sorting by disease would be good (use BNF categories: health professionals are already familiar with this, and it's logical and reasonably simple for those who are new to it) but sorting alphabetically is essential. For patients, usually they will already have their medication in front of them, so alphabetically would be the most useful for most people. For health professionals, the BNF is a more appropriate first port of call for medication choice; the BNF is, of course, arranged by disease/system, so being able to search an SPC/PIL website the same way would be nice but not essential.
Since the BNF is available online, links to a new SPC/PIL database from the BNF would be very useful.
Why the contribution is important
The SPC and PIL form the basic information about a medicine; they should be easily available at time of need to those who require them. Currently access is fragmented (www.emc.medicines.org.uk vs manufacturer's website) or not available at all outside normal office hours.
Healthcare does not only happen Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, and it is not conducted solely by professionals highly trained in information retrieval. Important information needs to be easy to find and always available so that all healthcare professionals and patients can find it and use it. Information, however good, is utterly useless if it is not available when and where it is needed.
Additionally, a full range of PILs online with permission to print would enable a PIL to be given with all split packs of medicine dispensed from a pharmacy, without need for a folder full of bad photocopies. Depending on format, it should also be possible to print large-print information for patients who require it.
Current tags
This development would also make it a lot easier for pharmacists to be able to provide PILs to every patient, although they would have to be provided in a high-quality, printable format.
The EMC website allows access to information on a wide range of medicines. For those companies not registered, in work hours this information is often hard to obtain, and out of hours even more difficult to access.