Re: [Gnumed-devel] AMH

[Horst Herb]

richard terry wrote:
> I had a talk to the lady at AMH this week. By the sounds of it the 
> information they supply is not up to the standard that ordinary GP's in 
> Australia would need. She was friendly and informative and will also send me 
> some data to look at.

I don't know what gives you this impression. Have you ever had a look at 
the AMH? IMHO, it is a completely different league - comparable 
difference as between a detailed sales pamphlet (MIMS) and a reference 
text book (AMH).

We use the AMH paper version extensively, both at the practice and at 
the hospital. If you have to make a decision quickly, you are lost with 
MIMS - but you get along in reasonable comfort with the AMH. Experience 
over the past 2 years with both.

> The interaction stuff which I think is critical has not reached a useable 
> point, nor have they decided on a structure for it.

The interaction stuff is not all that crucial. The most common 
prescribing errors that actually endanger patients are
1.) indication errors
2.) name confusion errors (the infamous "Losec" vs "Lasix")
3.) dosage errors
In these aspects AMH gives you way better information than MIMS.

> I still think that if we are going to get ordinary GP's here we need to use 
> the MIMS data for a foresable number of years, and presumably similar 
> datasets for overseas countries which have access to good quality data.

MIMS will always be an option for those inclined to that type of 
information. This is why I want to design our drug backend in a way that 
it allows multiple reference databases in parallel. However, for my 
personal way of practising medicine (generic prescribing etc.), MIMS 
doesn't cut the mustard - I'll stick with AMH or similar generic peer 
reviewed databases.

Horst