Overview
The eMC Medicine Guides resource is a leading medicines information website for medicine users and their carers, as well as the general public in the UK. Written by doctors and pharmacists, they provide up to date and reliable information helping people to:
- make informed decisions about their health and health care;
- be more involved in decisions with healthcare professionals about their treatment; and
- understand how best to use and take their medicine.
The eMC Medicine Guides resource is used by the NHS to provide medicines information for medicine users and their carers. Through a collaboration with the NHS, Medicine Guides are accessible to patients from the home page of the NHS Choices website www.nhs.uk, and from their Health A-Z. The resource is also linked from the A to Z of illness and conditions on www.bbc.co.uk/health and from many voluntary health organisations.
Comprehensive
The eMC Medicine Guides resource contains information about more than 2,700 medicines.
It includes 98% of the top 95% of medicines dispensed. This is determined from Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) data which is provided by the NHS' Information Centre.
Up to date
Each time a new or updated Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) is published on the eMC, our authors check the changes and if needed, update the relevant Medicine Guide. This allows us to keep the information on the eMC Medicine Guides resource up to date.
The information used to update the resource is governed by the Good Medicines Information Charter.
Governance
The eMC Medicine Guides resource is guided and governed by the Medicines Information for People (MIP) Board, which is a unique collaboration of groups with a shared vision to provide good quality, reliable medicines information for patients.
The MIP Board includes members from:
- Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)
- Datapharm
- Department of Health
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine (of the Royal College of Physicians)
- Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
- NHS Choices
- NHS Direct
- Parkinson's UK
- Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB)
- Royal College of Nursing
- Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB)
- UK Medicines Information (UKMi)
- University of Leeds
Partners
eMC Medicine Guides provides the medicines information on the NHS Choices website.
The eMC Medicine Guides resource is guided and governed by a multidisciplinary stakeholder group which includes the Department of Health, NHS Direct, NHS Choices, UK Medicines Information (UKMi) – an expert pharmacy service within the NHS, the pharmaceutical industry and professional and voluntary health organisations. This group is called the Medicines Information for People (MIP) Board.
Many voluntary health organisations link to the eMC Medicine Guides website from their websites. These include Epilepsy Action, National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society and Mind.
Other information providers link to the eMC Medicine Guides resource too. These include:
Authoring
An independent team of doctors and pharmacists write Medicine Guides using the information in a medicine's Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC). The SPC is approved by the UK or European government licensing agencies - the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Individual Medicine Guides are written in language which is easy for people to understand. This is done using a set of guidelines which have been approved by the Medicines Information for People (MIP) Board that governs the eMC Medicine Guides resource. This process ensures that Medicine Guides are independent, unbiased and non promotional.
All images of medicines and devices on the eMC Medicine Guides website are provided by TICTAC, the UK's leading drug identification database. Pharmaceutical companies provide samples of their medicines and devices to TICTAC who photograph them for inclusion on their database.
Funding
The eMC Medicine Guides resource is searchable by both brand and generic name. If a Medicine Guide uses the brand name, this means that the pharmaceutical company has paid for that Medicine Guide to be created.
Where a Medicine Guide uses the generic name, there is no pharmaceutical company directly involved in funding that Guide. A generic Medicine Guide is as accurate and as high quality as a branded Guide, written from the Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) in the same way as branded Guides.
View the list of pharmaceutical companies who fund eMC Medicine Guides.
History
Through a collaboration between Datapharm and NHS Direct the first Medicine Guides were published in 2003 for medicines used to treat epilepsy and flu. Following the success of the pilot, Medicines Guides were then written for all medicines which have a Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) displayed on the eMC website.
The eMC Medicine Guides resource contains information about more than 2,700 medicines.
In 2010, eMC Medicine Guides was redesigned, improving the search capability, look and feel of the website.
