Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14406

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

MHRA unveils medicine information resource
Pharmafocus 2008 Oct 1
http://www.pharmafocus.com/cda/focusH/1,2109,21-0-0-SEP_2008-focus_news_detail-0-492190,00.html

Full text:

UK regulators and the pharma industry have come together to launch a new website for patients.

The ‘mymedicine’ site is a joint collaboration between the MHRA and the ABPI, and explains the drug lifecycle and how medicines become available on the NHS.

Karen Miller, a director at the ABPI, said, “More and more people are going online to find out about health-related issues, and while the internet is a superb resource, it contains a lot of disinformation.”

She added: “[The ABPI] wanted to create a website which provides an authoritative and reliable source of information, and which explains the time and effort invested into medicines before they arrive in the medicine cabinet.”

The internet resource provide a guide to the life-cycle of new medicines, from their first scientific discovery through to licensing and on-going monitoring.

It describes how scientists pinpoint diseases and set about finding compounds to combat specific disease areas and explains the importance and different stages of clinical trials.

There is also a section focusing on how new medicines are made available through the health service and these decisions are reached.

NHS Direct backed the need for such a service, and said the organisation regularly receives calls from the public about new treatments having typically heard about them through the media.

Anne Joshua, NHS Direct’s associate director of pharmacy, said: “This new web resource will provide the necessary reassurance to patients and their families about how new medicines are rigorously tested before they are available to the public and what measures are taken to ensure the safety of newly licensed medicines as they are used across the range of conditions that they treat.”

The service is found at www.mhra.gov.uk/mymedicine.

The European picture

The website follows the on-going pan-European debate about access to online medical information, which is often of poor quality and misleading. Proponents of improved access say it is necessary for patients to obtain reliable data on the drugs they are prescribed.

But the debate remains unresolved, grounded by fears new legislation would eventually allow pharma to give medical information directly to patients.

Critics fear any kind of medicines information provided by industry will lead to a situation where it promotes prescription medicines to the public, which is legal in the US but currently banned across Europe.

Policy makers are expected to make up their minds soon, with a decision on the issue from the European Commission due this autumn.