The Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB), the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre (Lareb), the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), and the National Health Care Institute will work even closer together to make reliable information about medicines more easily accessible to the user.
The Dutch medicines chain consists of various organisations, each with its own tasks and responsibilities. These organisations include the Medicines Evaluation Board Agency (aMEB), the Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ), the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre (Lareb), the Central Committee for Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO (Central Committee for Research involving Human Subjects )), the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and RIVM. Together, they ensure that safe and effective medicines are available. In addition, they share the task of ensuring that information about medicines is good and reliable. Although this information is currently available, it is not all together in one place, but spread over various websites. RIVM is leading a project to establish how these websites can be linked to one another and the actions required to achieve this. In this way, the available information on medicines can be made more easily accessible to professionals. The link-up of the websites is expected to be complete by the spring of 2015.
It will be based on the digital Dutch Pharmacotherapeutic Compass (FK), a pharmaceutical compendium produced by the National Health Care Institute (http://www.farmacotherapeutischkompas.nl/ Dutch only). In daily practice healthcare professionals frequently consult this website for information. The FK contains information on the correct use of medicines, on which medicine is likely to be the most effective in a particular patient with a particular condition, and on which medicine has the lowest price. Each individual medicine will be directly linked to information about medicines registered in the medicines information bank (GIB) which is maintained by the aCBG (GIB; http://www.cbg-meb.nl/). On the GIB site it will be possible to access the official registration documents of a medicine such as product information for professionals, the public asessment report and the patient information leaflet. A link to the FK and the GIB for information on adverse effects has already been set up. This link can be found on the website of the adverse effects centre, Lareb (http://www.lareb.nl/ Dutch only). Via a link in the overview of reported events, it is now possible for users to consult the FK and the GIB directly.