The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now collaborating with Drugs.com, the worlds’ largest independent drug information website, to expand access to the FDA’s consumer-oriented safety updates and articles. The partnership means Drugs.com now features FDA articles, videos, slideshows and other consumer oriented resources.
Attracting some 12 million visitors a month, Drugs.com is focused on empowering patients to manage their own healthcare through greater understanding of the drugs they take and the reduction of medication errors. The site, which is not a pharmacy and does not dispense drugs, is owned and operated by the Drugsite Trust, a privately held trust administered by two New Zealand pharmacists. The website is hosted in a data center located in the U.S.
“Partnerships like this are an important part of the FDA’s effort to ensure the public has easy access to reliable, useful information that can help people protect and improve their health,” said Beth Martino, FDA Associate Commissioner for External Affairs.
“We are very excited about partnering with the FDA to provide consumers with public health and safety information on our site as well as our mobile phone platform,” said Philip Thornton, CEO of Drugs.com.
The Drugs.com drug-information database is powered by four independent leading medical-information suppliers: Wolters Kluwer Health, Physicians’ Desk Reference, Cerner Multum and Thomson Reuters Micromedex. Individual drug (or drug-class) information content compiled by these sources is delivered complete and unaltered by Drugs.com.
The Drugs.com medical dictionary is powered by Steadman’s Electronic Medical Dictionary which contains more than 107,000 medical terms taken directly from Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 28th Edition.
The Drugs.com Illustrated Health Encyclopedia is supplied by A.D.A.M., Inc., publishers of original content health articles. Most of A.D.A.M.’s health articles are initially developed by physicians, then reviewed by the A.D.A.M. Content Review Board, which consists of physicians who are specialists in their fields.
The Drugs.com Veterinary Product Database is an online version of the Compendium of Veterinary Products published by North American Compendiums. North American Compendiums is in the business of building, managing, maintaining and marketing data and databases in the animal health, crop chemical and human health industries in the United States and Canada.
The "Latest News" and "FDA Drug Alerts" sections are sourced from standard industry press releases, newspapers, online news sites, medical journals and the FDA.
More information:
FDA Consumer Updates: http://www.drugs.com/fda-consumer/