• Many hospitals in Australia offer a Medicines Information service, usually for the purposes of supporting hospital staff and patients. Some MI services offer assistance to external health professionals and consumers. 

    Pharmaceutical companies usually provide a service for enquiries about their products, as this helps them to fulfill their legal pharmacovigilance and reporting obligations, however the scope of enquiries that they are able to accept may be limited. 

    A contact list of MI services in Australia is available on the SHPA website.

    • Dose and administration
      Questions about the use of medicines and methods of administration including in special populations (e.g pregnancy, breastfeeding, neonates, renal impairment, enteral feeding tubes, nil by mouth)

      Adverse drug reactions, drug interactions and toxicity
      Advice about identifying, preventing and managing medicine-related harm.

      Availability
      Advice on how to obtain medicines, manage supply shortages and source imported medicines.

      Choice of therapy
      The selection of medicines in a particular disease or for a particular patient and advice about contraindications or precautions.

      Identification
      Identification of medicines including foreign drugs, drugs in development, and tablet identification.

      Pharmaceutical
      Compatibility, dose modification, stability, quality control, formulation, excipients, biopharmaceutics.

      Pharmacology and pharmacokinetics
      Therapeutic drug monitoring, absorption, metabolism and elimination profile, mechanism of action, adverse effects and interactions.

      Review
      Requests for general information about a medicine or a comparison of similar medicines.

      Complementary and alternative medicines
      Identification, evidence for safety and efficacy, effect on disease states and interaction with conventional medicines and treatments such as surgery and radiotherapy.

      Substance misuse
      Identification, safety and interactions.

      Legal requirements
      Questions about the law relating to medicines and prescribing, e.g. prescribing of restricted substances.

      Many enquiries will include multiple questions and encompass more than one of the categories above.

      What do Medicines Information services do?History of Medicines Information