Close to serving the drug compliance requirements of 4500 diabetic and epileptic patients over the past one year, the Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council (MSPC) promoted drug counseling centre at KEM Hospital will expand its services in other civic run hospitals going by its mandate towards rationale usage of drugs in line with Pharmacy Practice Regulations 2015.

To develop a culture of rational usage of scheduled drugs with help from a dedicated pharmacist, MSPC promoted first of its kind drug counseling centre in collaboration with civic run KEM Hospital marking a milestone in delivering clinically relevant information on medicines to patients for the first time in the country.

Due to this initiative, diabetes patients have been able to adhere to the rational usage of latest generation of drugs like Sitagliptin and Vildagliptin, according to officials associated with the development.
 
KEM Hospital and MSPC had jointly set up the first of its kind DCC in Maharashtra in January last year to help patients get the know-how about rational usage of scheduled drugs with help from a dedicated pharmacist.

Based on the collaboration, MSPC has deputed a pharmacist at KEM Hospital to help patients get the knowledge on medical prescription, adverse drug reactions, drug usage, dosage, schedule, drug-drug interaction and contraindications for better therapeutic outcomes.  

As per the system, patient submits the stamped prescription of the physician at the counseling centre. After registering the patient's records, the pharmacist deputed at the centre accordingly counsels him on drug usage with help from a Micromedex database on medicines.

The centre is equipped with a robust evidence based clinical reference software called Micromedex which is user-friendly and makes available evidence-based drug information and clinical answers much faster and easier.

Says Sheetal Chandan, pharmacist and co-ordinator at the centre, "The pharmacist at the centre educates the patient about drug use and aspects like drug-drug reaction, drug-food reaction and other contraindications.”

In the wake of rampant incidents of adverse drug reactions (ADR) in 38 women at BMC run Bhabha Hospital, Kurla and at Rajawadi Hospital in Vidyavihar East after being administered a variant combination of two Schedule H1 antibacterial antibiotics - ceftriaxone and cefotaxime two years ago, pharma experts advocate that the concept of Drug Information Centres (DICs) need to be embraced by healthcare institutions to address the menace.

Out of the 38 women who suffered drug reaction, a 47-year-old woman died after 24 hours of suffering an ADR due to the administration of antibiotic injections at BMC run Bhabha Hospital.

DICs according to experts will not only dispel a lot of misconceptions with regard to medical prescription but help address issues pertaining to adverse drug reactions, drug usage, dosage and time schedule for patient safety.
 
In order to deliver clinically relevant information on drugs, the concept of DIC started with 21 DICs in the country. After launching of Pharm D courses in India during 2008-2009, each college in India started gearing up towards setting up DIC and the number of DICs in the country gradually reached the figure of around 100 or so. But very few of them are working effectively as of today.