Browsing by Subject "sähköiset lääkeinformaatiopalvelut"

ommunity pharmacies and medicines information centers increasingly provide e-mail medication counseling services to consumers and health care professionals. As e-mail medication counseling services are fairly new type of pharmaceutical service, only little is known about the use and users of these services, content of e-mail enquiries and quality of these services. Objective of this study was to analyze utilization of e-mail medication counseling services in the University Pharmacy. The special focus was on e-mail enquiries concerning human and veterinary medicines and health issues. All e-mail enquiries sent to the University Pharmacy Medicines Information Center in 2009 and 2010 were recorded by using a structured data collection instrument and content-analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The total numbers of e-mail enquiries were 3 376. Of those 383 (11 %) were related to human medicines, 45 (1 %) to health and diseases and 33 (1 %) veterinary medicines. The majority of e-mail enquiries (72 %) were come via web page of the University Pharmacy. Of the human medicines related e-mail enquiries 92 % were sent by consumers and 65 % by woman. The most commonly e-mail enquiries concerned sleeping pills (5 %), antiepileptics (3 %), cholesterol medicines (3 %) and virus vaccines (3 %). E-mail enquiries fell commonly into the categories of availability (28 %), cost and reimbursements questions (13 %), medicines interactions (11 %) and adverse effects (5 %). Some background information was missing from e-mail enquiries, for example user of medicine (39 %), gender of medicine user (50 %) or age of medicine user (94 %). However, only part (3 %) of e-mail enquiries were sent adjunct questions. After improvement of usability and quality of e-mail medication counseling services response rapidity was increased in the University Pharmacy. Consumers appear to have medicines-related information needs. Additionally they are actively using e-mail services for multiple functions. However, the use of these services for medicines information is still fairly uncommon. The results of this study can be utilized when designing and developing e-mail medication counseling services in community pharmacies, medicines information centers and online pharmacy services. Additionally they can be utilized in pharmacy education in universities and in continuing education. More information is needed about the quality of pharmacists' responses and consumers' needs, experiences and perceptions on e-mail medication counseling services.