TORONTO – Truven Health Analytics, an IBM Company, has enhanced a version of its Micromedex provider solution specifically for the Canadian healthcare sector.

Additional Health Canada approved labelling and expanded guideline summaries now provide Canadian healthcare professionals with the clinical insights into medication uses, dosing and warnings they need to make the most appropriate treatment decisions.

Developed through interviews with practicing clinicians at Canadian hospitals, Micromedex solutions have been expanded to include:

• more unique Canada approved drugs with specific dosage forms and routes;
• Canada specific labeling for adult dosing, pediatric dosing, labeled uses, dose adjustments, and boxed warnings sections – for both Quick Answers and In-Depth Answers;
• faster access to Canadian brand names;
• key clinical guidelines from Canadian sources;
• new formatting to include International System of Units;
• new Drug Consults with direct links to Health Canada information on drug shortages and backorder status.

And to save Canadian clinicians the trouble of filtering through pages of content to find the specific information they are looking for, selecting the Maple Leaf from a new flag dropdown selection delivers just Canada-specific information, also for salt and base forms.

This selection remains throughout the search session to ensure users stay in context of their desired regulatory authority as they navigate to other sections of the monograph.

Perhaps the most interesting addition in this release is the functionality that allows users to directly request additional Canadian drug labeling, guideline coverage and other enhancements, and so have direct influence on the continued evolution of Micromedex content.

Arti Bhavsar (pictured), senior director global solutions, said, “Canadian clinicians – both customers and non-customers – have been looking for a comprehensive, consistent, evidence-based resource that provides them with Health Canada labelling and other Canada specific guidelines without having to hunt for it through pages of unstructured text. We are pleased to be able to provide that Canadian as well as global evidence that’s also easy to filter and search.”