Japanese Medical Academic Organizations Surveyed on the Current Situation of Medical Information Providedto the Public on the Internet

Nobuyuki Goto; Hitoshi Tsukamoto; Takaaki Kodawara; Toshiaki Igarashi; Kyohei Watanabe; Ryoichi Yano; Takamasa Sakai; Fumiko Ohtsu

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Japanese Medical Academic Organizations Surveyed on the Current Situation of Medical Information Providedto the Public on the Internet

VernacularTitle:国内の医学系学術団体における Web を利用した国民向けの医薬品情報提供の現状調査
Author: Nobuyuki GOTO ¹ ; Hitoshi TSUKAMOTO ¹ ; Takaaki KODAWARA ¹ ; Toshiaki IGARASHI ¹ ; Kyohei WATANABE ² ; Ryoichi YANO ³ ; Takamasa SAKAI ⁴ ; Fumiko OHTSU ⁴
Author Information

1. Department of Pharmacy, University of Fukui Hospital
2. Medical Research Support Center, University of Fukui Hospital
3. Osaka University of Pharmaceutical Sciences
4. Drug Informatics, Faculty of Pharmacy Meijo University
Keywords: drug information services; integrated information provision system; source of drug information; academic societies in the medical field; surveys and questionnaires
From:Japanese Journal of Drug Informatics 2021;22(4):193-201
CountryJapan
Language:Japanese
Abstract: Objective: The internet isflooded with drug information; however, some of it isinappropriate and thisinadequate information could expose the public to health hazards. Therefore, we conducted research on the idea of transmitting drug information to the public via the internet and the current state of the information currently provided by each academic society relevant to the field of Medical Informatics.Methods: A questionnaire was mailed to the website managers for the website of 129 specialist medical societies, all members of the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences. We conducted our research between October to November 2018. We investigated each website administrator’s opinion about offering drug information for consumers via the internet and what information each academic society is currently providing.Results: The effective response rate was 43.4% (56/129 groups). Most respondents thought that drug information overflowed in the current Internet society. Moreover, more than half of the respondents thought that the quality of drug information transmitted to the public wasinadequate. Currently, 30 of the academic groupssurveyed are providing information to the public. When providing information, they did not refer to the “Drug Guide for Patients” much. More than 80% of respondents said they would cooperate with linking to the information provided to the public. However, each academic society felt there would be many problems with doing so such as the need for a system to check the contents of the information provided and a system to perform maintenance.Conclusion: The results showed that the website administrators recognized that there is a need to improve the quality of and system for providing drug information to the public. We believe that an integrated information system can be constructed by aggregating the drug information held by each academic society. However, this cannot be realized without first solving many problems.