E-drug: E-DRUG: Re: Drug and Therapeutics Committees (contd)
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The message from Dr Shariff is very interesting as these ideas have been
considered for DTC's in Zimbabwe but there are problems. The WHO indicators
of drug use in health facilities are for out patients not inpatients and
they do not work so well for inpatients. They are affected by disease mix
and duration of admission.
Reviewing how often the formulary is revised may be useful but if the
committee meets every month and discusses changes would these count as new
editions?
Sending out news bulletins may be a measure of activity but unfortunately
we know they do not correalate with changes in practice.
So I think we need to try other measures. My suggestions include:
Frequency of D&T meetings, attendance rates, studies undertaken, success of
interventions, changes in consumption of targetted drugs.
However we need to field test these indicators and so I think the proposed
WHO manual will be very useful for these tests.
Richard Laing
Associate Professor
Department of International Health
Boston University School of Public Health
715 Albany St
Boston MA 02118-2526
Tel 617 414-1444
Fax 617 414-1442 or 638-4476
richardl@bu.edu
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