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Drug and herb interactions: searching the web.
Felix W S Wong1, Linda Lin, Danforn C E Lim
1School of Women's and Children Health, University of New South Wales. f.wong@unsw.edu.au
Australian Family Physician
|November 7, 2009
Summary
General practitioners (GPs) need better internet resources to answer patient questions about drug-herb interactions. A new web portal with risk categorization could improve clinical decision-making for complementary medicine use.
Area of Science:
- Pharmacology
- Evidence-based medicine
- Health informatics
Background:
- Australian patients incur significant annual expenditure on complementary medicine and therapy.
- General practitioners (GPs) frequently field patient inquiries regarding potential interactions between prescribed and complementary medications.
- There is a need to identify reliable internet resources to support GPs in addressing these queries.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate current internet resources available to assist GPs in answering patient questions about interactions between prescribed and complementary medicines.
- To identify effective online tools for managing drug-herb interactions.
Main Methods:
- A systematic search of internet resources was conducted.
- Resources were evaluated based on predefined selection criteria.
- The study identified a limited number of websites meeting the criteria from an initial pool of 100.
Main Results:
- Many evaluated websites offered insufficient information and poor search functionality.
- Only seven out of 100 assessed websites met the study's inclusion criteria.
- A need for a more comprehensive and user-friendly web portal was identified.
Conclusions:
- A dedicated web portal featuring risk stratification (mild, moderate, severe) for drug-herb interactions is proposed to aid clinical decision-making.
- Collaboration with regulatory bodies, such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration, could enhance the utility and impact of such resources.
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