Physician hand-helds Next big thing. e-Pocrates & Parkstone medical are the leaders. MDRX allscripts another player
FDA MedWatch Partners with ePocrates to Send Out Drug Safety Alerts
FDA MedWatch and ePocrates—the largest handheld network of physicians—announced today that FDA MedWatch will be partnering with ePocrates to send out critical safety information to physicians and other healthcare professionals in the ePocrates network. This is the first time that MedWatch has partnered with a handheld network to disseminate safety alerts, recalls, withdrawals, and important labeling changes that may affect the health of all Americans.
"The FDA's MedWatch outreach program is committed to providing timely safety updates to health care professionals on the drugs and devices that they use in their busy day-to-day patient care efforts," says Norman S. Marks, M.D. Medical Director, MedWatch, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "By partnering with ePocrates, our goal is to make this clinically important safety information easy to use, timely, and available at the point of care where healthcare professionals and their patients make shared decisions about diagnosis and treatment."
The ePocrates network consists of over 300,000 healthcare professionals and more than 150,000 physicians who use the ePocrates electronic drug reference, which contains definitive data on crucial safety topics such as indication-specific dosing, adverse reactions and multiple drug interactions. The data in the qRx software is always current because of ePocrates' proprietary AutoUpdate feature, which automatically updates the database on physicians' handheld device each time the doctor performs a HotSync® operation to the ePocrates server.
"ePocrates has developed a cutting-edge technology that allows us to send doctors short, concise messages called DocAlerts® everytime the user updates the ePocrates drug reference," says John Voris, CEO of ePocrates. These DocAlert® messages, which are delivered directly to the doctor at the point of care, are the first thing that appears on the screen when the physician turns on the handheld device. Because DocAlerts® have such high readership rates, FDA MedWatch felt that DocAlerts® would be an effective means of delivering safety alerts.
Dr. Marks agrees that the ePocrates drug database with its AutoUpdate and DocAlert® features serves the MedWatch goals very well. "By offering timely safety alerts and labeling updates to large numbers of America's doctors, nurses, and pharmacists for use during their daily work," says Dr. Marks, "the MedWatch/ePocrates partnering is an excellent example of the power of leveraging technology to improve public health."
The MedWatch program began in 1993 with one of its goals "to better inform health professionals about regulatory actions taken by FDA in response to reports" of adverse events and product quality problems. Alerts may be issued for a wide variety of products used in the clinical practice of medicine -- prescription and OTC drugs, medical devices, biological products [including vaccines and blood products], and dietary supplements. Alerts may include public health advisories for categories or classes of medical products, safety-related labeling changes with or without "black box" warnings for specific medical products, product recalls, product withdrawals, and drug shortages.
About ePocrates
ePocrates Inc. is the largest handheld physician network, enabling quick point-of-care access to important clinical information. Since the launch of its flagship product, qRx, in November 1999, the network has grown to more than 300,000 users, including 150,000 physicians. In a review published in JAMA, qRx software was described as "indispensable," "simple and intuitive" and "so useful as to justify the purchase of the hardware itself." In addition to the ePocrates qRx clinical drug database, ePocrates also offers the qID antimicrobial reference guide and DocAlert® messaging capabilities.
Headquartered in San Carlos, CA, ePocrates is a privately held company led by president and CEO John Voris, former COO of PCS and veteran of Eli Lilly. The company was founded in 1998 by Richard Fiedotin, MD and Jeff Tangney and is funded by Sprout Group, Bay City Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest and Three Arch partners. For more information on ePocrates, visit www.epocrates.com.
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