I was going over the docs in attempt to find out if drugref (used to be at drugref.org) is still used in openEMR ? Best I could find is a posting from 2005 that indicates that it has been used in the past.
Your docs indicate that currently you are looking for data at rxlist.com. Can anyone elaborate on that. Is there a license agreement between openEMR and rxlist.com ? Has drugref been dropped ?
There is a current effort to revive the drugref concept. Folks from GNUmed are working with the author of FreeDiams to get a drugdatabase concept working. Actually it already works for French drug data but is currently being extended to include Canadian drug data and WHO data.
Does the openEMR community see any value in supporting an effort to get the drugref concept working again. That means a common drug/interactions interface that abstracts multiple drug data sources ?
OscarEMR from Canada uses some older version of drugref so they might be in as well.
Please let me know so the effort of the FreeDiams , Oscar , GNUmed and potentially openEMR coders can be coordinated.
It is very good to here from you here in our forums. We are currently building drug decision support against the Lexi-comp database and plan to add RxNorm as a free alternative. The code at this time already has drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug-food and drug-disease interaction checking working against the Lexi-comp database. This code has already been shown to be working and is within 1 week of completion.
I think we would be very interested in working on this jointly if there is interest from the other projects.
I am not sure how interested the FreeDiams, Oscar, and GNUmed projects would be, but we are also working on e-prescribing through SureScripts. We are building a connection to SureScripts that will support initially new prescriptions, canceling and refilling prescriptions. SureScripts is large and not very consumer friendly. Our plans to add prescription history, prescription changing, and insurance formulary checking have been slowed due to SureScripts bureaucracy.
I have checked out Lexi-comp and I am afraid that in out setting it is no option. Commercial drug databases are readily available in Germany and other countries. However we are looking for ways to get out of the vendor lock-in by using an abstraction layer like this:
GNUmed or openEMR
|
_ drugref / FreeDiams_
|
Lexi-comp or WHO data or Ca-DPD
That way when vendor goes out of business or contract cannot be renewed the EMR won’t break. If all EMR agree to develop and implement this interface drug database manufacturer will come running circles to make sure drufreg supports them as data source because EMR won’t license a drug database which is not supported by the interface
Would it be an option/possibility to have a choice of what Drug database to use? In Curacao Neth. Antilles we do not have any available professional or unprofessional provider who can give us an updated drug database to use with drug availability or interaction, prices, etc.
I have, during the last couple of years, made my own database and this one is usable but far from complete.
I would love to see some sort of look-up-tab that can be used with any available drug database……………
Even better if this great Open Source project can get those drug providers in shape to joint OpenEMR and give us support with this part of development, without the usual commercial impact.
I believe you are also Karsten and if I remember correctly, a pediatrician?
We had been using a “scraper” to obtain information from drugref.org but they kept changing the url and breaking our scraper. We started looking for a more permanent solution that we didn’t have to keep fixing. As Pimm has pointed out, local laws frequently dictate the use of a particular version of database that has to be updated more frequently. This is one of the reasons we are moving towards a free version as an option and a more quickly updated proprietary version for local, country specific, use.
We are also very interested in avoiding in vendor lock-in. We used the the Lexi-comp database as our initial example its use is not “written in stone.” We want to have a free option as well but have been concerned about how fast it takes the free databases to get updated. Currently about 1/2 of our users are international and about 1/2 are US based. A more international database especially one that uses generic names would be a good thing for our international users. As an example there is growing interest in China and they are required to use generic names.
Would it be beneficial to start an area in the openmedsoftware.org wiki concerning the pros and cons of the different databases available and use it to get input from the other projects? This is almost ideal timing for this discussion because we have not fully completed the e-prscribing project and now is the time to change the plan if we need to.
This program in version 0.3.0 is only usable for one database at a time but it is currently extended to support more databases.
In the next version it will support a free Canadian drug database. After this support for WHO data is planned.
FreeDiams is two parts. One part is a user interface to write prescriptions. The other part is the core module that handles multiple databases. FreeDiams can interact with other medical software such as GNUmed or Medintux.
The goal is to make FreeDiams a universial drugdatabase adapter which can be used by any EMR to access a number of drug databases.
If you are interested in this I recommend you contact Eric Maeker from FreeDiams or Jim Busser from GNUmed or simply reply here.
We are highly interested in what you have done so far and what you plan for the future.
Karsten is a general practionioner, I am in training for Cardiology.
This whole issue has been discussed at length in FreeDiams forum, GNUmed forum and private. I cannot point to a comprehensive overview but I can make the information available for easier consumption.
Note that until 0.4.0 of FreeDiams this can change. What I am saying here is that there is great interest and effort to get a first version going. Since drugref went unmaintained we did not do anything until we heard of FreeDiams. FreeDiams is not Drugref but we are working with Eric to get a multi-database solution working in real life.
If it turns out that there is interest from more EMR there will be a decision if it is advisable to continue working on FreeDiams or take the best from FreeDiams and start a seperate project. GNUmed currently decided to support FreeDiams as it is a working solution today.
It is a promising project, but in printing prescriptions I can’t get the recipe to print the total amount of tablets to be given.
Is this a test phase or do I miss something? How did they assemble the Database? What free program could be used to mimic this database?
Can it be included as an Add-on in OpenEMR for those Non-Californians who want something different?
I like the iedea of WHO Drug database or the European Database…… (Looked for, but could not find the related site on the wwww.