Complete this month's Continuing Education questions to qualify for extra NZ College of Pharmacists credits. go
Last month's answers here
MIMS electronic to go ads free
12 July 2010
MIMS Integrated for GPs will cease to carry pharmaceutical advertising from 1 August and will become purely a subscription-based service.
Pharmacists are already receiving ads free MIMS through pharmacy management software.
Advertising has funded the service since 2001 to most GPs who have been using MIMS medicines and decision support information, free of cost, from within their practice management software.
UBM Medica, the publisher of MIMS, says that model is no longer viable due to growing discomfort among clinicians with the presence of advertising within the prescribing and consulting environment.
The advertising-free, user pays model for GPs will be more acceptable and efficient, while removing the perception of bias.
UBM Medica chief executive Colin Abercrombie says GPs will have three months to sort out their subscriptions and will, irrespective of their subscription status, continue to receive monthly updates during the first ad free cycle from 1 August to 29 October.
“That will give them a long lead-in period to adjust to the new model,” Mr Abercrombie says.
From November, all doctors wanting to access MIMS Integrated will need to be subscribers and general practices will not have the option of part-subscribing wherein only some of the doctors opt-in.
Porirua pharmacist Graeme Blanchard thinks there’s a need for consistency on GPs’ uptake of monthly updates as prescribing errors could potentially go up if some practices decided to forgo them by choosing not to subscribe.
“It needs to be compulsory to have monthly updates or you can’t use the [medicines information], as is the case with pharmacy,” he says.
Some GPs are currently not using any electronic lists and rely on paper versions of the outdated medicines information to prescribe from, causing prescribing errors. Mr Blanchard says selective uptake of subscription could only add to that problem.
He adds it will be interesting to see how MIMS Integrated fits in with the roll out of the Universal List of Medicines, when the latter becomes a part of all practice management systems.
Meanwhile, Mr Abercrombie says barring promotional discounts to doctors, all health professionals will eventually pay the same annual subscription.
He is inviting ideas for a creative use of the advertising space that will be freed up.
“We could use the space to reinforce drug safety messages in a targeted environment,” he says.
<< Back