[The pharmaceutical record]

With a view to improving healthcare quality, an Act of Parliament passed on 13 August 2004 provides for a "Personal Medical Record" (Dossier Médical Personnel, or DMP) for every person in France by 2007. The purposes and interest of this coordination tool are widely understood and accepted. However, its implementation proves highly complex, due to its many legal, human and organisational aspects. Community pharmacists, being totally conversant with IT resources, propose actively to contribute to the DMP by supplying it immediately with pharmaceutical data, through a "Pharmaceutical Record" (Dossier pharmaceutique, or DP). This professional tool, which the National Council of Pharmacists is currently developing, aims to centralise data on all medicines dispensed to each patient, and, subject to strict confidentiality conditions, to make it accessible from any pharmacy. The DP should allow pharmacists soon to meet the objectives set by the law: fighting drug induced accidents and redundant healthcare. By making dispensation more secure and better suited to the individual patient, it should allow medicine traceability right to the patient (another important objective for public health), and support the future evolution of the pharmacist's role. In short, the pharmaceutical record should become an asset for community pharmacist's practice to live up to the demands of healthcare in our time.