Blog
What HCPs are looking for in medicines safety information: Results of the 2022 emc annual survey
Mar 7, 2023
Finding accurate, reliable and up-to-date information on medicines has never been more important. With HCPs (healthcare professionals) facing immense pressures at work, it is vital that they are supported with quick access to information they can rely on.
emc (electronic medicines compendium) is continually being developed to provide access to HCPs for this vital information. Since its creation in 1977, emc has evolved from a printed publication to becoming the UK’s first electronic repository of medicines information in 1999. It is now established as the UK’s trusted source of safety information for medicines, enabling Pharma to provide non-promotional product information to HCPs while maintaining compliance with UK regulations.
In 2022, we saw emc continue its role as a trusted source of medicines information, with a growing audience worldwide and engagement with regulated documents such as SmPCs and PILs remaining at a consistently high level.
Looking forward, the drive for improving patient outcomes is central to emc’s role in engaging HCPs and patients with medicines information. Datapharm has been working diligently on a structured format for medicines data, such as the information we see in SmPCs and PILs. When this structured format is utilised throughout healthcare systems, this will enable information on emc to be linked with the patient record, resulting in improved decision making with how patients take medicines.
Learn about how HCPs source medicines safety information
We asked emc users about their challenges with finding medicine safety information and their experiences with emc. Our findings provide insight into why so many of these users choose emc and what information they were specifically looking for.
A large proportion of survey respondents were HCPs. For many of them, their biggest challenge was the need for specific information about a medicine, while their most common use cases involved looking for information on posology and dosage or on side effects.
With so many online sources of information available, what are HCPs’ experiences like in trying to access medicine safety information, and how well does emc fare with meeting this need?
To find out, read our full report from the emc annual user survey.